Wendy Miles, a resident of Allison Park, Pa., knew the sex of her oldest children before they were born. Not through the science of ultrasound or amniocentesis, but through the much older method of the wedding ring swing.

"My mother's friend had a method that she said had never been wrong," Miles recalls. "She had me tie my wedding ring on a piece of thread, then my husband held it suspended over my belly. The friend predicted by the ring's movement what I was having. She was right both times, but, personally, I still think it was luck."

Since then, Miles has had one more child. That time, her mother's friend wasn't around to do the wedding ring test, so Miles' mother did the predicting instead – based on how Miles was carrying the baby. She, too, was right, but, in spite of their track record, Miles isn't any more convinced of the legitimacy of either of those methods.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health found that Miles is right to be skeptical. In the September 1999 issue of the journal Birth, they asked 104 pregnant women to use whatever method they liked, including folklore, dreams and hunches, to guess their unborn child's sex. The women were right 55 percent of the time – about the same as would occur for a random guess.

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