the wedding over belly old wives tale goes. . .
For this tale, it is said that when an expectant mother’s wedding band is attached to a strand of her hair and dangled over her belly while she is lying on her back, it should induce a movement to the hanging ring. Depending on the type of motion it takes is a gender prediction.
If the ring swings back and forth like a pendulum then the prediction is a baby girl. If it swings in a circular motion, then it’s a baby boy. What if it doesn’t move? Well, then I guess it isn’t working, try giving it a nudge to start it off!
baby gender test results
Where this one lets itself down, depending on where you hear the old wives tale told it doesn’t need to be the wedding band or hair. I figure the tale is a little more romantic when told in this way. It should work in the same manner with any ring, pin or needle and held on string, cotton or duct tape. Ok I made the duck tape part up! But this is the problem with the ambiguity of some tales and their validity.
If it has got any ounce of truth, it could in ‘theory’ work something a long the lines of dowsing. Dowsing has been used for centuries to locate water and buried metals within the earth. Although it hasn’t even been proven that dowsing works, so it is has a very slim possibility that the wedding ring myth will work either as a way of predicting gender.
Tip:
If this is one of the old wives tales you might try yourself, consider asking a family member or friend who doesn’t know the tale to hold the ring over your belly. This way you can be sure they are not suggestively influencing any movement that may happen.
Also, we tried this one out for ourselves and found that the ring didn’t actually move when just dangled. We found that if you start the ring moving by giving it a nudge or swing, once it settled it found its own rhythm. It either swung circular or back and forth. We also found, if you hold the ring over a female belly, it swung like a pendulum (as the tale says). Whereas held over a male belly it went in circles (as the tale says). Even if you try to influence the swing, it will correct itself which was fascinating to watch. This means you really can’t sway the result of this wedding ring over belly to predict baby gender.
What this says about the gender prediction tale we don’t know, but in our experience it knew the gender of the person under the ring!
Wedding ring over wrist gender test
As with the belly old wives tale the same test can be tried over the wrist. Movement back and forth indicates a girl, circular movement indicates a boy. It still has the same reliability issues as the belly test though, and is very unlikely to offer an accurate gender prediction.
