Know-it-all

Last Thursday, my supervisor and I had a number of meetings at different locations. After one meeting, at an office not our own, she arranged to take a conference call before we went on to our next meeting, which was at another location altogether. She asked me to bring along my lunch, and just wait for her to finish her teleconference.

During this time, I ended up meeting one of the new clinicians at this location, and we got to chatting. She saw that I was pregnant, and we talked about that a bit. She shared with me that her step-son and his wife had just had a baby, which wasn't supposed to be possible because "she wasn't even supposed to be able to have kids," she explained(?). She then told me that of all the people she knew these days having kids, they all seemed to be having boys, and pondered why this strange demographic might have occurred.

Well.

I went off on something like this.

"Well, here's one theory that might explain it. If you buy into the concept that boy sperm and girl sperm are different, you see, they say that boy sperm are faster but they die sooner; and girl sperm are hardier, but slower swimmers. So I've read that women who are actually trying to get pregnant, that is, charting their cycles and pinpointing their ovulation dates and so on, if you buy into the sperm theory, they're more likely to have boys, because these women would be having sex on the exact day of ovulation, which means the faster boy sperm are going to be the ones who make it. And think about it, a generation or two ago, women didn't "try" to get pregnant, it would just happen. Women were starting families at a much younger age. These days, we wait, we go to school, we get our careers happening, we marry later, we're 32 and 35 and even 40 years old when we get around to starting families. So therefore, it's more likely that those older women are approaching pregnancy with the sense of purpose and planning, and are doing the charting and everything, so that they can get pregnant exactly when they want to. Plus, it can be a little more difficult when you're older, which just makes it that much more important to be charting your cycle. So that could be why there are more boys born these days.

"...Aaaaaand I've probably just told you way more than you ever really wanted to know about it!"

I was kind of amused at the contrast between her idle wondering and my immediate leap into the fray with an expert opinion. Apparently, idle conversation is not one of my strong points.