Does sexual position play a part in conceiving a girl? Research seems to show that the answer is yes. Again, this comes back to the differences between male (Y) and female (X) sperm.

Because the male sperm are quicker than the female sperm, but are also less resilient, you can lower their chances of fertilising the egg by increasing the distance they have to travel. The further they have to travel, the less likely they are to get to the egg before they die off, giving the slower but more resilient female sperm a better chance of reaching the egg first.

So how do you get the male sperm further away from the egg? Well, this can be achieved by using the right sexual position. Positions that achieve shallower penetration will deposit the sperm further from the egg, giving the male sperm a greater chance of dying off first. Basically, the longer the distance they need to travel, the less chance they have of surviving the swim.

A distance of an extra few inches seems insignificant, but to a single sperm, getting to the egg is the equivalent of a human swimming from England, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to New York. So you can appreciate that if the sperm are deposited a few extra inches away, that will make a huge difference to the distance they have to travel.