When little Myla Lawrie was brought home from hospital fourmonths ago, a veritable sea of pink greeted her, with clouds ofballoons filling the sitting room, along with cards, bunting andribbons in every shade of girliness.

四个月前，小麦拉·劳里(Myla Lawrie)从医院被抱回家时，迎接她的是一片粉红色的“海洋”——起居室内飘满粉红色的气球，点缀着粉粉的卡片、幔幕和缎带，到处洋溢着粉嫩女孩的气息。

For this was a very special event in the Lawrie family. When Myla was born in October, she was thefirst girl to be born in her family since 1809.

对劳里家族而言，这是一件特别的大事件。小麦拉出生在十月，她是1809年以来劳里家族降生的第一个女孩。

The last time a midwife announced "It's a girl", the Napoleonic war was still being fought, themotorcar was yet to be invented, and "mad" King George III was on the English throne.

上一次产婆宣布“生了个女孩”的时候，还是拿破仑战争时期，那时候人们还没发明汽车，“疯癫的”君主乔治三世还在位统治英国。

No wonder her proud parents — Hannah, a 26-year-old midwife, and Mark, a 33-year-oldprofessional golfer turned coach, from Maidstone in Kent — wanted to celebrate.

有了这些理由，小麦拉的双亲如此引以为傲，也就不足为奇了。她的母亲是24岁的助产士汉娜，父亲名叫马克，是一名职业高尔夫球员，两人都来自英国肯特州的梅德斯通。如今，他们想为这个新生命的到来庆祝一番。

"When Mark and I first got together, he told me how everyone in his family, for five generations,had produced boys," explains Hannah. "He warned me that the chances of us ever having adaughter were pretty remote."

汉娜说：“我和马克刚在一起的时候，他就告诉了我他们家族成员已连续五代都只生男孩。他提醒我说，我们拥有一个女儿的希望十分渺茫。”

True to form, when Hannah became pregnant in 2012, no one was surprised when Mason, who'snow three, was born.

事情不出所料，当2012年汉娜怀孕时，毫无悬念地迎来了他们的儿子——梅森。现在梅森已经三岁了。

Looking back over the family tree, Hannah could see why everyone was so convinced. The last girlto be born in the Lawrie family was Mason's great-great-great Aunt Bessie, born more than 200years ago in the same year as Charles Darwin.

回顾劳里家族的家谱，汉娜明白了为什么每个劳里家族的后代都对此深信不疑，劳里家族诞生的最后一名女性是马克的高曾姑母贝茜，她生于200多年前，和达尔文同年。

Bessie and her brother had had sons, and so the pattern had continued, all the way down to Markand his brother Glenn. Mark has two other boys, ten-year-old Ben and seven-year-old Zac, from aprevious relationship, while Glenn had one son, Reece, who's 14.

贝茜和她的兄弟们生的都是男孩，于是这一现象开始流传下去，一直延续到马克和他的哥哥格伦身上。马克和前任还有两个儿子，十岁的本和七岁的扎克。格伦也育有一子，十四岁的瑞斯。

"I even questioned whether there could be a genetic¹ condition that meant Mark produced onlymale sperm²," says Hannah.

汉娜说，我甚至曾咨询过，是否因为遗传的关系，所以马克只能产生雄性精子。

"I asked numerous doctors and consultants³ in the hospital where I work if this was the case, butwas told time and again that it wasn't. Every time a baby is conceived, the chances of it being a girlare 50/50, they told me — but in Mark's family, for some reason, it never was."

我还问了很多和我同院的大夫是否是这种情况，但每每得到的回答都是否定的。每一次受孕时，生男生女的机率都是各一半，但在马克的家族，不知为何却从来不是这样。

Desperate to improve their chances of having a girl, Hannah came across the Shettles Method,developed by an American doctor in the Sixties, which claims the timing⁴ of conception can helpdetermine the baby's sex.

为了提高生女儿的几率，汉娜采取了“薛德思法(Shettles Method:由薛德思博士提出的一种帮助选择婴儿性别的怀孕方式)”。该方法是由一名美国医生在六十年代提出的，主张怀孕的时间有助于决定婴儿性别。

This is based on evidence that male sperm (Y chromosome) are faster, weaker and have a shorterlifespan than female sperm (X chromosome), which are slower but survive for longer. This meansthat having sex before ovulation, rather than during, should increase the likelihood of conceiving agirl, as only the female sperm will survive long enough to penetrate⁵ the egg.

该观点基于雄性精子(即Y染色体)与雌性精子(即X染色体)相比游动速度更快，但生命周期更短且活性更低。雌性精子虽然游动得较慢，但存活时间更长。这就意味着，排卵之前而非排卵期进行房事，会提高生女孩的机率，因为只有雌性精子具有足够的存活时间与卵子结合。