It's a Baby Girl!

The Unique Wonder and Special Nature of Your Daughter From Pregnancy to Two Years

Stacie Bering, Adie Goldberg, The Gurian Institute, Adie Goldberg

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780470243398
• eBook ISBN: 9780470441114
• Edition: 1

Very practical science based tips and guidelines and stories for moms and dads of baby girls. Including:

• Why you need a book just about girls. The very different health issues, genetic predisposition, hard wiring, neurological and biological development of girls, including unique strengths and weaknesses.
• How to understand the core nature of your girl and nourish it through problems of crying, fussing, eating, sleeping, attaching and other key issues during the first 12 months of life.
• Warm hearted stories about girls and tips from real moms, and a preview of what's to come for girls as they become toddlers, preschool kids, pubescent and beyond.

1

The Girl Inside You

Sara was waiting for her amniocentesis results. An obstetrician herself, she knew how long the test took to perform, so she was expecting a call from the genetics clinic any day. At thirty-five, she was considered an “elderly primigravida,” a phrase she used wryly as she described older first-time moms like herself.

Because of her age, she knew she had a higher risk of having a child with a genetic problem, and so she had chosen to have an amniocentesis. This involved taking a small amount of fluid from around her baby and checking to see that everything was OK.

Finally, the call came.

“We’ve got your results back,” Ginger, the counselor at the genetics clinic told Sara. “The chromosomes are normal. Everything looks fine.”

But there was something Ginger had left out.

“What is it?” Sara asked, her stomach doing silly flip-flops. She couldn’t explain it, but she wanted a girl, and Ginger, her close friend, knew it.

“Why, it’s a girl of course!”

Perhaps, like Sara, you have the results of your amniocentesis, or the ultrasonographer saw the two swellings that identified your daughter’s labia at a routine ultrasound. Perhaps this is your first baby and you weren’t worried about what sex your baby was. When curious friends asked, “Do you want a boy or a girl?” you replied, “Either, as long as it’s healthy,” and now you are holding her in your arms. She has just drifted off to sleep so you’re trying to read a few pages.

Then again, maybe like Sara, you were hoping for a girl.

Some couples might wonder if it’s possible to choose the sex of their baby. Perhaps you have two boys and wanted the experience of having a daughter. You might have asked if there was any way to increase your chances of having a girl. Science comes back with a resounding “NO!”

• BABY GIRL BRAIN FACT •

Why Does a Doctor Suggest an Amniocentesis?

• You’re thirty-five or older and the risk of Down syndrome and other, rarer, chromosomal abnormalities, increases with age. Down syndrome is the result of a baby having an extra chromosome.

• You had a blood test called a triple or quadruple screen at week sixteen of your pregnancy and the results were abnormal. With an abnormal result you are at increased risk for delivering a child with Down syndrome, a spinal defect (spina bifida), or a severe brain abnormality. REMEMBER! It is quite common to have a false positive result. Usually it comes from you or your doctor miscalculating your due date. An amniocentesis and an ultrasound will give you a more accurate result.

• You had an ultrasound, and something abnormal was detected.

• You have a history of a chromosomal abnormality in your family.

• You have already delivered a child with a chromosomal abnormality.

• BABY GIRL BRAIN FACT •

Guaranteeing a Girl, or “Wear the Jockeys,
Not the Boxers, Honey!”

Depending on the myth, you should

• Eat lots of vegetables and fish; have chocolate for dessert

• Make love in the afternoon

• Make love on even numbered days

• Make love during the full moon

• Have the female partner initiate sex

• Be sure the male partner has an orgasm first

• Make sure your husband keeps his genitals warm by wearing close-fitting underwear and tight trousers

• Put a pink ribbon under your pillow and a wooden spoon under your bed

Remember:

• All of these suggestions are myths.

• None has held up to scientific scrutiny.

• But the odds are pretty good no matter what you do—you have about a fifty-fifty chance of conceiving a girl!

However you made your girl, you’re about to find out how genes, DNA, and chromosomes worked together to create your baby girl and what scientists are learning about why your daughter is so different from your best friend’s son, starting from the moment of conception.

If you’re curious to know why your friends and family are telling you that girls are unique, read on!

Gene Talk

1. What is DNA? The body is made up of different kinds of cells: liver cells, skin cells, and blood cells, to name a few. DNA is every cell’s set of instructions or blueprint. It tells the cell whether it’s going to help your little girl taste chocolate or help her do push-ups.

2. What are genes, anyway? Genes are made up of the DNA. They are the instruction manual for your girl’s body. They tell her body how to develop and function. Genes determine whether your daughter will grow tall and slender like Uncle Fred or short and squat like Aunt Pearl. Your daughter’s genes determine whether she’ll have high blood pressure or a tendency toward diabetes. Your daughter has an estimated twenty-five thousand genes.

3. What’s a chromosome and where can you find one? In the center of most of your body’s cells, you’ll find the nucleus, or the cell’s command center. Within that nucleus are the chromosomes, the gene holders of your body. Chromosomes come in pairs, like shoes. We each have twenty-three pairs. When you and your partner created your daughter, you each gave her half of the set of twenty-three chromosomes.

4. What makes my girl a girl? Blame it on the sex chromosomes, specifically two X chromosomes. Because all of Mom’s cells have two X chromosomes, her eggs will always pass on an X chromosome to her child, male or female. But Dad has two different sex chromosomes, the long and lean X chromosome and the rather puny Y chromosome. Half his sperm will carry an X chromosome, the other half a Y. Your daughter was created when an X-carrying sperm met up with Mom’s egg (always carrying an X chromosome). Human girls are XX.

Although your daughter’s X chromosomes are long and lean, containing up to fourteen hundred genes, she missed out on one important gene (important to guys, that is) that appears only on that stubby boy-making Y chromosome. It’s called SRY and it directs other genes on other chromosomes to get involved in making boy parts, starting off with the all-important testosterone-producing testicles.

• BABY GIRL BRAIN FACT •

A Lot of Neural Mileage

Your daughter’s forty-six chromosomes contain so much information that if you wrote it all down, the data would fill a stack of books two hundred feet high! If you pulled the entire twisted DNA from a single cell and stretched it out, it would be as long as a car. If you stretched out all the DNA in a human body, it would stretch to the sun and back six hundred times!

Without the SRY gene, the collection of cells that became your daughter had no choice but to go on its default path—that of the female. Or so it’s long been thought. As scientists begin to unlock the secrets of the human genetic code, they are beginning to find evidence that there are ovary-determining genes on the X chromosome.

Without the influence of testosterone coming from a pair of testicles, your daughter’s early collection of cells is propelled down a path that is uniquely female.

From Embryo to Baby Girl

Your baby’s journey to becoming a girl child started when your husband’s X sperm fertilized your X-bearing egg. Initially, the embryo had a “unisex” look about it. If you were able to peek in at that moment you wouldn’t have been able to tell if you were having a boy or girl.

Toward the end of your first trimester, your daughter began stage one of the three stages of development that made her a girl. First her ovaries formed. Next came her other internal girl parts, her uterus and fallopian tubes. Finally her vagina and external organs made their appearance.

Step 1: Formation of the ovaries. At about week ten of your pregnancy, your daughter’s ovaries began to develop per her genetic plan. While your best friend’s fetal boy was inundated with hits of testosterone, your daughter’s ovaries were not making much of a contribution to the huge amounts of estrogen that pour out of your placenta. At least in utero, estrogen does not drive your daughter’s female development. That will happen shortly after birth.

Step 2: Formation of her internal female organs. Just like her male counterpart, your daughter started off with two sets of cords in her abdomen. The Mullerian ducts were the female set and were free to grow because there was no SRY gene to stop them. These ducts were destined to become her uterus, fallopian tubes, and the upper part of the vagina. The Wolffian ducts, which would have grown into boy parts, wither away, unused.

Step 3: Her external girl parts. Up until about eleven to twelve weeks of pregnancy, your daughter’s genital area was rather nondescript. There was nothing on the outside that could tell you if this was a boy or a girl. Even though female hormones will be held responsible for much about your daughter’s future female development and behavior, it is her female genetic code, not her hormones, driving the growth of her clitoris, labia, and lower vagina.

You Can’t Blame It on Her Hormones

Your daughter’s ovaries are not doing much in the way of producing estrogen in utero, thus her journey to womanhood, at least before birth, is determined by girl-promoting genes, unhindered by a Y chromosome’s interference. Without the stormy hits of testosterone your nephew was exposed to, your daughter’s reproductive anatomy develops in a leisurely fashion. Your daughter won’t experience her “hits” of estrogen until she is out of your body.

The first series comes shortly after birth, and lasts for the first six months of life, continuing the work that began in utero. During this time your daughter’s ovaries begin producing estrogen at levels not seen again until she is an adult. Her female brain circuitry soaks in this bath of female hormones. At the same time, these estrogen hits take responsibility for getting your daughter’s reproductive structures ready for her to make babies of her own. Yes, we know that seems eons away!

The second hit of estrogen comes with puberty. This sets the processes in motion that will change your girl’s body into that of a woman. Starting a few years before your daughter actually gets her first period, her stick-straight girl body will gradually develop curves, and grow underarm and pubic hair. Her breasts will emerge, and she’ll probably complain that they hurt.

Without testosterone interfering, your daughter developed not only female genitalia but a decidedly female brain. Estrogen will later be the hormone responsible for the physical changes your daughter will experience, but in the meantime it is your daughter’s girl brain that will direct her female approach to the world.

Is Your Girl’s Brain Different from Her Brother’s?

Yes. Absolutely.

The latest research shows that testosterone and its buddies have profound effects on the formation of the male fetal brain. Put testosterone in the mix and some cells in some areas are destroyed while other areas of the uniquely male brain, generally less verbally and emotionally oriented, develop. Without testosterone your girl’s communication and emotion centers develop unperturbed.

In the early days of your pregnancy we were unable to differentiate between a male and a female embryo’s genitalia. We also wouldn’t be able to differentiate between a male and female brain. We all start out the same. But even before you missed your period, your daughter’s nervous system was beginning on its complicated path.

How Does a Baby Girl’s Brain Grow?

By the time you had taken an early pregnancy test and gotten the news, your daughter’s brain was starting to form. Your baby was little more than a tiny flat disk floating over a ball of cells. The transformation of this fertilized blob of chemically driven cells into a young woman who will solve complex problems, talk on the phone for hours, and read chemistry textbooks is an amazing process.

A microscopic groove developed along the length of the tiny disk. The groove deepened and eventually sealed its edges over to form a lon...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 - The Girl Inside You
• Chapter 2 - Her First Year
• Chapter 3 - Gazing into the Future: Toddler and Preschool Girls
• Chapter 4 - A Baby Girl Is a Family Affair! Circles of Support
• Sources
• Resources for Parents of Girls
• The Gurian Institute
• About the Authors
• Index