Desire to control the sex of offspring is both ancient and common but nature has made fulfillment of this desire incredibly difficult. Over the centuries many folk remedies have been proposed but even more recent techniques, relying on separating Y- and X- bearing sperm by centrifugation, have not proved to be effective for gender selection. 

IVF with PGS (pre-implantation genetic screening) involves a biopsy of the Day 5-7 embryos for genetic analysis focused on detecting the number of chromosomes in each embryo. The primary goal of PGS is to determine which embryos have a normal number of chromosomes and are likely to lead to the birth of a healthy baby but it also determines which normal embryos are female and which are male. 

This technique detects the gender of early embryos after fertilization has already occurred so it does not influence the sex of the embryos. Only embryos exhibiting timely development to the blastocyst stage undergo biopsy for genetic analysis and are frozen pending results of the analysis. A single normal embryo of the desired sex is thawed and transferred into the uterus. Abnormal embryos are discarded. The accuracy of gender determination by PGS is greater than 98% but it falls short of 100%.

The likelihood of achieving a live birth through IVF with PGS depends on many factors such as the age of the woman providing the eggs, her ovarian reserve and uterus. PGS does not increase the live birth rate per retrieval but it decreases the number of miscarriages. However, there is no absolute assurance that either a live birth or a child of the desired gender will be achieved through this complex technique.

Patients interested in gender selection come to us from San Francisco, the Bay Area, Berkeley, Oakland, Sacramento and nearby locations.