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No woman, no cry?

An analysis of over a million births in Sweden from 1987 to 1995 suggests that baby girls more likely to make their mothers sick during pregnancy. Johan Askling's group from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden found that severe nausea and vomiting during a woman's first trimester of pregnancy is most common if the foetus is a girl. This is attributed to higher levels of a hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin in such women. But this cannot be taken as an indicator of the sex of the unborn child. All women who complain of morning sickness may not necessarily be carrying a girl child ( The Lancet , Vol 354, No 9195).

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