October 22, 2025
Gender Prediction: Podcast Episode #313
Ever wonder how early you can really find out your baby’s gender — and which tests you can trust? In this episode of Ask the Doulas, we talk with Dr. Dallas Reed, an OBGYN and Chief of Genetics for Tufts Medicine, who also serves as a medical advisor for SneakPeek, the at-home fetal sex test that’s accurate as early as six weeks of pregnancy.
Dr. Reed helps demystify the science behind early gender prediction and prenatal genetics, breaking down what’s hype and what’s helpful. We cover carrier screening, NIPT (non-invasive prenatal testing), and how to make informed decisions about your pregnancy care with confidence.
Whether you’re newly pregnant or planning ahead, this conversation will help you feel empowered, informed, and ready to navigate prenatal testing with clarity.
Hello, hello! This is Kristin Revere with Ask the Doulas, and I am thrilled to chat about the science behind fetal sex testing and some common myths about gender prediction and determination. Our special guest today is Dr. Dallas Reed. She’s an OB-GYN and chief of genetics for Tufts Medicine. She’s also a medical advisor for SneakPeek, an at-home fetal sex test accurate at six weeks of pregnancy.
Welcome, Dr. Reed!
Thank you! Thanks for having me!
Six weeks is so early!
Very early.
I love it! I’d love to hear more about what led you to specialize in genetics, of all of the areas of focus you could have in medicine. I’m fascinated.
Yeah. Thank you for having me. So I’m actually an OB-GYN and a geneticist, so I’m double boarded in both, and I actually practice both clinically now – so I spend half of my week doing average risk obstetrics, labor and delivery, call occasionally. And then the other part of my week seeing prenatal patients or couples, children, adults with genetic conditions or suspected genetic conditions, and then we do cancer genetics also in our clinic. So family histories or personal histories of cancer.
So my genetics practice is pretty broad, actually. I think like a lot of people that go into medicine, my instigation for doing what I’m doing was a personal story. So when I was in first grade, my mom had a baby with a genetic condition. It was the 90s, so ultrasound wasn’t as good. They didn’t really know that this was happening. And then she kind of had an emergency C-section. I think he was a little bit premature. And once he was born, it was very clear that there was something different about him. It took a little while to figure out what his diagnosis was, but it was a life-limited condition. He actually survived longer than we thought he would. He lived for four months, two months in the hospital in the NICU and then two months at home with us.
And so from that experience – I think I always knew I wanted to be a doctor, but from that experience, once I was really starting to think about, what do I want to do when I grow up and what kind of medicine do I want to practice – those memories were the main ones driving me. And so I looked into how can I combine genetics with a clinical career. I didn’t really know anything about it. I thought it was probably a lot of research and things like that. Obviously, it is, and genetics is really in everything nowadays. But I ended up stumbling upon this combination of OB-GYN and genetics, and pediatrics and genetics, and just really went on that route as I entered medical school.
I am really lucky that I get to do the thing that I was inspired to do. And really, I tell people that what I was wanting to do was to be the person that our family needed at that time. Again, it was the 90s. There was no Google. There was no internet to just look things up and try to piece it together and find other families or experts. And so I know what it’s like for a family to not have somebody to go to with questions. So I really cherish that role that I get to play, being somebody that has some knowledge in relation to the thing that their family member may have or is being evaluated for and being the person with some answers or at least some next steps on how to approach the issue.
The fact that you’re seeing patients as an OB-GYN and also working with high risk patients gives you a different lens, not only with your personal background but to be an advisor for SneakPeek, you’re seeing first hand what your patients are asking for. And they’re having a hard time, obviously, waiting for that ultrasound.
Yeah. I think the first two questions we get when we see a new patient is, is my baby okay? And is it a boy or a girl? So I do think it’s kind of cool to have this well-validated test that you don’t even need your doctor to order for you. It’s not through the doctor’s office. I mean, there are some doctor’s offices that may have it, but for the most part, it’s not really through your OB-GYN. You can get it on your own. It’s very accurate. And you can know before you even have that first OB appointment if you’re having a boy or girl, if that information is important to you. And I think for a lot of patients, the reason they want to know is because they want to start to feel connected and start that planning process. It’s nice to be able to do that even at that early point. And we know that a number of pregnancies may end in miscarriage, and that can be really challenging, of course, but I think for some people, it may be helpful information to help them connect with that pregnancy because they were already planning a life with that child, right? I do think that it helps kind of no matter what the outcome of the pregnancy ends up being.
I agree. That is definitely something that my clients who have known loss really want to know, the gender, and name their baby. That is important to connect, even if it is a temporary time.
Yes!
So I am curious about the myths that you know surrounding gender prediction. Obviously, there are all of these tales, that you can tell the gender based on how high or how low you’re carrying your baby, or family history. But I would love to hear from you, as a doctor and with a background in genetics, what you have heard from patients.
Yeah, I feel like every now and then, I hear a new thing I’ve never heard before, which just speaks to how much people for all of time have wanted to know this nugget of information about their pregnancy. Some of the things are quite old and passed down in families, but the high and low, like how the belly is sitting. The heart rate. I’ve heard that one, if the heart rate is high at the beginning, then it be a specific sex, and if it’s low, then the other. Myths about if the mother has acne at the beginning of the pregnancy, if she has a lot of nausea and vomiting at the beginning of pregnancy, it’s one or the other. If she’s craving sweets. I’ve heard all kinds of things.
And SneakPeek actually partnered with a research group called Talker Research to ask these questions, like what do people understand and what do they believe. Most of the time, the questions around fetal sex – half the group said one thing, half the group said the other thing. It didn’t really correlate with if they were having a boy or a girl. So I tell patients that I think those things are fun. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them. I think you can think whatever you’d like to think. Obviously, SneakPeek is a way for you to know for sure. And then later in pregnancy, getting into that 8 to 12 week period, there is obviously more other genetic testing that can be offered in pregnancy that also as a part of it can tell you the sex of the fetus. But that’s the only way to know for sure. Ultrasound is also pretty accurate, as accurate at the genetic testing that we’re talking about. That’s the only way to know for sure, but I don’t think that means you can’t have fun with some of these things.
And it seems that gender reveal parties are all the rate on Pinterest and Instagram, social media. My clients talk about planning big parties. So that may give them even more of a window to plan out the reveal or have the party planners, if the couple doesn’t know the gender, be able to help with that.
Yeah, that is a good point. I think that sometimes when we do, later in the pregnancy, that noninvasive prenatal testing, which is like a screening for Down syndrome and trisomy 13 and trisomy 18 – and we can also look at the sex chromosomes in that testing. Oftentimes I’ll get patients who say, well, I want to know this result because I want to know if there’s any genetic differences that pop up on the testing, but I don’t want to know the sex yet, and they feel very conflicted about whether they should look at the results and whether they should test that part or not. And certainly, these are two different tests. SneakPeek is different than this noninvasive prenatal testing. But if they can already kind of have that information for someone to have in hand for whatever time they are ready to reveal it – maybe that simplifies the process. Because I tell them, I can’t hide it from you. It’s on the report, so don’t look at it if you don’t want to know that part. But I think maybe it simplifies things a little bit for people.
That makes sense. And as you mentioned, Dr. Reed, SneakPeek is an at-home test, unless of course some physician’s offices sell it. How does the process work?
So you can get it at the doctor’s office if they offer it, or some of those ultrasound suites may have it. But otherwise, you can get it on SneakPeek.com or Amazon, Walgreen’s, CVS, or Walmart, online or in the store. And it is an at-home device. It has a little plastic device that you take a sticker off. You stick it onto your arm. There are very teeny, tiny needles, so you barely feel anything, and it gets a couple of drops of blood, like three to five drops of blood, and then it collects the blood in a little bit of a tube. And then you just cap that tube and mail it back to the company. They will look in that sample for any Y chromosome material.
To take us back to biology, we might recall that in people who are genetically female, they have two X chromosomes. That’s what we call the sex chromosomes. And in genetic males, they have an X and a Y chromosome. And so what the testing is doing is looking for any Y chromosome material floating around in the blood of the pregnant person. If they see any Y chromosome material, they would report out that the fetus is predicted to be male. If there’s multiple fetuses, then it only can tell you if there’s Y chromosome material, so if they see it, then at least one of the fetuses is male, but it’s not going to be able to tell you that one is this and one is that. Really, the only way you can do that is with ultrasound.
I was wondering how that works with multiples. Obviously, if they’re the same gender – female, for example, the twins or triplets – then that wouldn’t be an issue, but as you mentioned –
Or if you knew you had identical twins, although that early, you wouldn’t know that. If you knew they were identical and you get Y chromosome material, then you would know they’re both boys.
I should also say that the testing comes back very quickly. It can be done very early, at the six-week mark, but it also comes back as quickly as 24 hours after they receive the sample. You can pay for a different cost if you want it to come back quicker. That’s pretty quick. There’s not a lot of genetic tests that happen that quickly, even though we’re getting better and better. 24 hours is pretty quick.
That’s so quick! Especially with mailing that in and waiting on the mail. I love it! For those planners, the type A personalities that want to know right away. I wanted to know the gender for both of my children, but I do have clients who appreciate the surprise and want to wait and see.
Yeah. Part of that study I was talking about when SneakPeek partnered with Talker Research – the data they had showed that about 69 or 70% of people did want to know. And I think that lines up with what I see in the office. Maybe even a higher percentage that want to know at some point, like maybe it’s not as soon as we can know in the office, but they want to do a gender reveal or they do want to know, whether it’s because they want everybody to buy in and get excited, or it’s because they have one child already of one sex and they’re seeing if they’re balancing it out or not. Lots of reasons.
Yes. I do feel like the reasons vary based on the couple, but some of it is that either gender reveal party planning or wanting to know how to plan a baby registry. Or as you mentioned, the other siblings and planning the growth of the family.
We said this earlier, but it’s also just the first concrete thing you know, right, about the pregnancy and the fetus. So I think that even if you don’t know what you would do for a registry or what your nursery would look like or a name, it allows you to start thinking about those things, which I think a lot of people really like.
Absolutely. And it’s a way to involve the partner more in that connection process. It’s easier for the mother to connect with the baby, but if the partner has some concrete information and can help plan in that way, then that certainly helps.
Yes, I agree with that, too.
What other tips do you have for our listeners who are considered fetal sex testing?
I mean, I think that knowing that you can do the test as early as six weeks is good information. I think it’s important to know that the testing is not looking at every genetic thing you can look at. It’s literally just looking for that Y chromosome material. Later in pregnancy, there are other tests that are offered that look at more medical or genetic conditions that could be seen in a fetus. And so we want to make sure that you’re talking to your doctors about those and understanding how those are different from what you’ve done already and how that can just give you more information. And that pregnancy is about kind of information overload sometimes, right? At every visit, getting more tests and more information. At the end of the day, I want to make sure you talk to your doctors about any questions that you have. Obviously, social media is a source of information for a lot of people. But making sure that you talk to your doctor or provider as well to make sure that what you’re seeing and reading is grounded in science and real experience and isn’t just somebody’s one experience that might be an outlier.
Right. That is the issue with some of those discussion boards and mom groups on Facebook and Baby Center. Misinformation is given. It’s not evidence based. They’re not going to their provider. And we know that our medical team is limited in the amount of time that you can spend, so it is helpful – I have my clients come up with a list of questions or discussion points when they have those prenatal visits so they can use the time most efficiently and feel like they’re getting the support they need, rather than going to other moms who may give them anecdotal information.
Yeah. I have two kids, and when I was pregnant with my first one – you know, you just get inundated with invitations to join this and join that, so many things. So I joined one of the things for an app that I had with a discussion board, and I remember reading some of the questions. Some of it’s really tough, like triggering. They had one app that was kind of synced up with how many weeks I was along, and one of the posts was like, there was no heartbeat. And I’m like, oh, my gosh, you cannot just be throwing this in people’s faces, adding to the anxiety of pregnancy already by, without warning, telling me about your horrible appointment you had today where they couldn’t find a fetal heart rate, right? So there were things like that and then things where people were just asking questions and people are answering them with completely false information. I’m on there to be like another pregnant person, not on there to be an OB-GYN, so I just had to get off of all that stuff. I was like, I can’t. I can’t just be correcting everything left and right. That’s a full time job that I already have, actually.
Exactly. So as far as finding those credible sources, what do you recommend, Dr. Reed?
So one of the societies that kind of guides how we practice as OB-GYNs is the American College of OB-GYN. They often have some patient-facing materials about certain topics. The Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine is also another very reliable source. SneakPeek.com is a good website, too, that talks a little bit more about the test and the device and sort of how to use it, if you’re curious and want to see it. A website that I usually recommend that can talk about the genetic tests that we offer in pregnancy or before pregnancy to kind of help people understand what their chances are of potentially having a child with genetic conditions is called Know More Sooner. It talks about the pros and cons and myths about some of these standard genetic tests that our doctors should be offering us when we’re thinking of having kids. So I like that one. And then at the end of the day, like we both said, I think writing those questions down and bringing them to your doctor – there’s no question that’s too silly or too small. A lot of doctors now have portals where you can kind of send messages like that in advance. A lot of times, the doctors or nurse practitioners or the nurses in our office – we’re used to getting similar questions, and we can answer those questions quickly so you don’t have to wait until your next appointment and use up the time of that appointment for some of these things that just came through your mind and you thought about.
So I would say those are some resources, but talk to your doctor is really the answer.
Fully agree! Well, thank you for sharing all of your knowledge! I appreciate your insight into SneakPeek. I’ve been curious, and my clients talk about it, so it’s great to know that they have an amazing advisor on their board! Thanks very much, Dr. Reed! You mentioned the SneakPeek website earlier. You’re also on social media?
I am on LinkedIn, mostly. I’m not on much other social media these days. You can find me on LinkedIn. I think SneakPeek and Know More Sooner are two websites that I think are pretty reliable with a lot of good information that people in this stage of life might be interested in reviewing.
Excellent. And then I know SneakPeekTest is on Instagram, so for our listeners who love Instagram, that channel is @sneakpeektest.
Thank you so much, Dr. Reed, and we’ll have to have conversations again in the future!
Of course! Thanks for having me!
IMPORTANT LINKS
Birth and postpartum support from Gold Coast Doulas