I often write about influencing the gender of the baby you are trying to conceive. One of the questions I get asked quite frequently is some variation of the following: “Will having an orgasm during conception increase the chances of having a baby boy or girl?”; or “will having an orgasm help or hurt my ability to get pregnant?” I will answer these questions in the next article.

The fluids of an orgasm do not hurt, kill or compromise the sperm: Sometimes people write to me and say that they are afraid that an orgasm will somehow affect, compromise, or destroy a man’s sperm. It really doesn’t. Fortunately, healthy sperm from a healthy man is stronger than that. However, what it does do is change or affect the acidity of your vagina. And depending on the gender of the baby you want to conceive, this can be good or bad.

Why having an orgasm can lower your chances of conceiving a girl (and increase your chances of having a boy): If you want a girl, you need your vagina/reproductive tract to be very acidic and have the highest PH you can handle. The reason for this is that the Y sperm that baby boys give you are very vulnerable in this type of environment. They cannot survive this way for long.

But having an orgasm produces fluids that can lower your PH. So if you want a girl, you’ll want to avoid this. (I know, this is not fun.) But, you really just need to avoid this or hold back on those days when you’re trying to conceive. The effects of the fluid are not permanent or long-lasting. It’s okay to ignore this during other times of the month.

Female ejaculation during conception favors a boy, but is often not enough to ensure his success: As I said earlier, the female ejaculate fluid alkalinizes the vagina. This is what you want if you’re trying to make a child out of a baby, so there’s no need to hold back. However, this alone is often not enough to get your PH lower. Admittedly, it’s an easy thing you can do to get down. It costs nothing and requires no special equipment. However, if you’re starting out with an acidic body, it often won’t make enough of a dent in your bottom line.

How do I know who I am?: How do you know where you are standing? You can test its acidity or alkalinity using PH test strips. These are not very expensive and are fairly easy to find. This will tell you if your tendency is towards high or low PH. Whether you want to go short or tall depends on the gender you want (again, tall for a girl and short for a boy).

If you don’t get the reading you expected, that’s really okay. You can change this by showering and/or altering the foods you eat for a short time. Everything you eat is acidic or alkaline. Eating different foods will also affect the PH of your body.

As you change your diet or shower, you can retest and see how these changes have affected you. This also allows you to see what things are giving you the best and easiest results in terms of PH. You will also need to watch for the timing of conception depending on when you ovulate and also use the correct sexual positions, to name just a few more things.