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Some people have suggested that fetal heartbeat is faster among girls than boys. Rates above 140 beats per minute, it is speculated, are typical for girls. Below that, and it's a boy. Or so some might say.
Yet in practice, this theory holds little water. A fetus' heart rate changes throughout pregnancy, starting at around 85 beats per minute and then speeding up by an average of 3 beats per minute each day during the first month. Most babies will reach an average of about 175 beats per minute before slowing down to somewhere between 120 and 160 beats per minute by the middle of the pregnancy. British researchers studied fetal heart-rate variations in 79 women, looking for differences between males and females. Their findings, published in the Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, revealed no tangible differences in the heart rate between male and female fetuses. Other studies that have looked into this claim also tend to attribute it to folklore.
So the bottom line is that if there is any relation between fetal heart rate and a baby's sex, it is small, and certainly not significant enough to be used as an accurate indicator of gender.
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