Red Wellies # 9: 👶🏼 How to Predict the Color of Your Baby's Eyes 👶🏼
When I was pregnant with Freyja, we'd often talk about who we thought she would look like, what color hair she'd have and what color her eyes would be.
Of course, hubby, thought that she'd have green eyes like him and our eldest daughter, I rather wanted her to have brown or I guess hazel eyes like me and our eldest son. With our 2 older daughters having blue & green eyes, brown would be good to add to the mix :)
All this got me thinking that there had to be an algorithm to predict this.
And there are many calculators on the web that do just that. They are all pretty much the same and take into consideration the eye color of the parents and then spits out a prediction of baby's eye color based on that.
Most newborns born to Caucasian parents have blue eyes at birth, and those born to Asian or African parents, have brown or dark grey. The final eye color will be determined over time with exposure to light which causes the melanin to activate and start the change to their final eye color based on the genes inherited from their parents.
This change normally begins around 6 months and has finished by the age of 3.
But how is their final eye color determined? Simply put, it depends on the paring of the parent genes. These genes can mutate into 3 "alleles", brown, green and blue.
Brown is dominant over green and blue; green is dominant over blue and blue is recessive.
Therefore, your baby's eye color depends on whether they inherit dominant or recessive genes from you.
And as each parent carries 2 genes for eye color, it's also dependent on whether the genes the parents carry are homozygous (both brown) or heterozygous (1 brown, 1 non-brown) and as this is impossible to tell by looking at someone's eyes, the calculators work off the dominant & recessive color genes.
Take Freyja for example. I have brown eyes; her father has green eyes, therefore the chances of her having blue eyes are very slim, as both brown and green eyes are dominant over blue. And as brown is dominant over green, she has a higher chance of having brown eyes.
She has 50% chance of brown, 37.5% green and 12.5% blue.
When Freyja was born she had blue/grey eyes much like her brother when he was born, which leads me to believe that she will have brown eyes like him. However, they did start to look green and almost exactly like her dads…
Today, I think they look brown close to the iris and then grey towards the outer edge… as she's only 16 weeks old, we have a while to wait to see what color they end up being… so for now she has chameleon eyes, but if I had to place a wager, I'd say brown…
Even though we use 3 eye colors when calculating here, there are, 6.
Blue eyes have a low level of pigment in the iris and are becoming rarer and rarer and in a recent study, researchers found that everyone in the world that has blue eyes are related!
Over half the people in the world have brown eyes, making them the most common. Brown eyes have the most melanin present.
Grey eyes may look like blue but may have flecks of gold or brown and appear to change colors based on lighting, clothing and mood.
Green eyes are the rarest and are found more frequently in northern and central Europe.
Hazel eyes like grey, appear to change color and are a combination of brown and green.
Red eyes aren't really red, but because there is so little melanin or color in the iris, you are actually seeing the blood vessels behind the iris.
No matter what color eyes your baby has, there's nothing that melts your heart quicker than looking in them and having them smile and coo back at you :)
What color eyes do your children have? Would it have been accurate to predict based on the color of the parent's eyes? Would love to know in the comments.
Original content by @redwellies
Such a cute baby!!
@matthewwarn Thank you! She really is :)
Your girlie is so adorable. I want another. :) Ha! That's another story for another day!! Anyway, we are the rule breakers here. My husband and I BOTH have green eyes. 2 of our kids have brown eyes and three of them have blue eyes. None of our kids have green eyes. It's so weird. We figured that they all would. I am the only one of my siblings with green eyes (like my dad and also born on his birthday). My three brothers have blue eyes and so does my mom. My husband's parents have blue and brown eyes and he is the only one with green eyes. It's so funny how we are created!
@apanamamama Thanks! I think you should, I mean you only have 5, what's 1 more :)
It really is interesting and I think it does come down to whether you have homozygous (both brown) or heterozygous (1 brown, 1 non-brown) genes, which you can't tell by looking, but maybe guess based on the outcome.
2 of our children have blue eyes (although my daughter says hers are grey now), 1 green and 1 brown/hazel and the baby chameleon :)
Blue eyes surprise me that they are rare as they are essentially a deficiency in the eyes layer and with simple removal surgery almost anyone with brown eyes can have blue eyes.
I like the idea of using a calculator to predict baby’s eye colour.
I agree 👶
Thanks for the informative and enjoyable post :D
@lifeaef Thank you and yes, that surprised me too, as you see blue eyes all around, I thought it was the same % as brown eyes :)
Well this explains a lot lol! I have hazel eyes and my husband has brown eyes. Every baby we’ve had I would hope they get my eyes. Well of course none of them have. Our youngest son does have really light brown eyes but still no hazel. My husband always teases that he has the dominant genes and none of our kids will ever get my eyes. 🤷🏽♀️ Thanks for sharing this eye predictor with us~ 😊 Such Cute baby pics by the way! 🤗
@crosheille Thanks! And sorry no hazel eyed babies yet... maybe this one :) you'll just have to wait and see because you never really know :)
Fingers crossed!!!! 😄😄😄
I remmber a coupld of our girls first and third had blue eyes when born and I was quite excited to see they had my eye color but with time they changed color and didnt stay blue I was quite surprised i have to admit
Thanks this post brought back this to me which I hadnt though about for years
@tattoodjay glad to take you back down memory lane :) It really is interesting to see what color they change to. When our first son was born, his eyes were definitely grey compared to when his older sister was born and his turned brown and hers remained blue.
It is so interesting one of the girls was perhapsca grey blue but the other was a deep blue but they both ended up kindlof greeny brown
That was really interesting! It seems blue are getting rare but green is hard to match if both parents don't have the same color. Your daughter's are beautiful, such a deep color! And I loved your conclusion, it's true if I ever have kids just seeing them would melt me down hahaha.
@siucatti I'm glad you liked it :) It really was interesting to research and now it will be interesting to watch Freyja and see what color she ends up with... follow-up post in a couple of years :)
@redwellies your daughter is adorable. I've been able to come across alleles and genes back in high school. ^^
I look forward to seeing what Freyja's eyes turned out.
@dawnsheree Thank you! According to daddy they're green today lol ;)
You got a 2.00% upvote from @redlambo courtesy of @matthewwarn!
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