It's a taboo more mothers are shattering - daring to admit they're unhappy with a healthy baby because it's not the sex they wanted | Mail Online

Through books and the internet, she conducted her own research into how to tip the balance towards having a girl.

'Some suggested change in our diets but I decided the most important factor, from all my research, was timing,' she says. 'The theory was that having sex on the day the woman ovulates would produce a boy, because the faster swimming sperm (more likely to be Ychromosome "male" sperm) would reach the egg first.

'However, for a girl, sex should take place before ovulation. The Y sperm wouldn't last as long and would die off. But the X chromosome-bearing female sperm would still be waiting to fertilise the egg.