Red Cabbage Gender Test

So, one of the more scientific old wives' tales out there for gender prediction is the red cabbage test. Intelligender is an expensive test you can waste $40 on that operates on the exact same principle--with less accurate results! The idea behind is is that red cabbage juice (made from boiling the chopped cabbage) is a pretty accurate test of pH. Kids even use it in school as an easy, cheap science experiment. First, how to do the test:

You get a head of red cabbage (size doesn't matter and I only used half a head), add water (I boiled it in a kettle, then set it on the burner) and boil it for 10 minutes. Take it off heat and go pee in a cup (I'd suggest using a clear plastic cup, but a glass works, too if you don't mind that it's had pee in it). Draw the blue-violet water out of the cabbage pot and measure it equal to the urine (I drew it with a coffee mug, let it cool, then added it to an identical clear cup and eyeballed the measurement side by side). Then add the cabbage water (which my husband called pot liquor, which amuses me, since he's from California and I'm from Missouri and never heard that term, but it's supposed to be a 'country' term) to the urine. Some places say to use a third cup, but there's no reason not to just pour the cabbage juice into the pee.

Now, you'll have a new color. A purple color indicates a girl result and a pink color (resembling cranberry juice) indicates a boy result.

So, this works to identify male urine versus female urine. The idea is that if you're carrying a boy, he will influence the pH of your pee. If you're carrying a girl, she can't influence it, since you're already a girl.

I am awaiting my ultrasound and am antsy to see my baby and find out the gender, so I finally broke down and bought a cabbage. This test is really recommended for 10-16 weeks (I assume because most people start finding out after that), but I'm 19, almost 20 weeks and couldn't wait anymore.

So, when my 4 year old daughter decided to use the toddler potty while I was using the main toilet, I snaked some of her pee off to test, so I have a control for "girl" as well as the control cabbage juice, of course.

First, I'll show a picture of this test someone else did (if you recognize your picture, please feel free to message me for credit!) with a control (left), girl's urine (middle) and boy's urine (right):

Okay, so here's my daughter's pee (right), next to the control (left):

And on its own, to get a shot of the purple color (the red square is my camera reflection):

Now, I didn't take pictures of my first test, because I was so eager to do it, it didn't occur to me, so I repeated the test later and got the same results (it made a LOT of juice!):

And close up on the color:

Now, since the test is supposed to be done with first morning urine (FMU), I took another test this morning--and the results were instantaneous this time and very clear:

Sorry about how bright they are--I just have a little point and shoot and this was the ideal distance to get their color--anything further away and they all looked almost black in the pictures and I wanted to use the raw pictures. I got a very clear 'boy' result. Will we be welcoming our first son in November?

For other old wives' tales, I've taken an online quiz that combines many of them (baby position, morning sickness, cravings, etc.) and got a 'boy' result; a heart rate predictor that used the average for gestation age instead of the overall pregnancy average: boy again. According to the Chinese gender prediction chart, this is a girl.

So, this was written on my birthday: June 17th. The rest of the blog will be written after my ultrasound, to find out if the test was accurate (as I find it frustrating to see these posts and not know if they were right or not!).


Well, my utrasound was today and according to the ultrasound--the red cabbage test is...

Wrong.

We're expecting a little girl in November!