The birth of a child is the most wonderful moment in the life of every woman. Even at the stage of pregnancy, expectant mothers begin to ask questions about what gender the baby will be, who they look like, what color their eyes will be. This article will tell you what color the eyes are in newborns and when it begins to change.
Special pigment
Most babies are born with the same unclear gray-blue eyes. Sometimes the iris has a dark shade - this means that the child will have brown or black. Responsibility for the shade lies with a special pigment - melanin, it is he who is responsible for what color the eyes of newborns will be when they are born. While the baby is in the womb, this substance is almost not produced, only a few days after the birth of melanocytes begin active growth and accumulate in the iris. Within a month, the color of the eyes of the newborn becomes brighter and clearer, the turbidity passes, but the shade remains the same. Not always the color shade of the iris of the child is the same as that of the parents. This leads to questions of young mothers about whether the color of the eyes in newborns changes.
Heredity
A baby at birth inherits the genes of both parents, but they can change under the influence of the developmental features of the child. It is the heredity and personality of a small organism that is responsible for when the color of the eyes of a newborn changes. Usually, changes in the color of the iris begin in a few months and can drag on for several years. Of course, the hue will be formed earlier, the changes will affect only its intensity. But even doctors cannot say for sure when the color of the eyes in newborns changes, how many months or years this will happen.
Who is stronger
The birth of a person is a miracle and is still not a riddle for scientists. No one can know in advance who the child will look like whose set of genes is stronger. Part of the mystery reveals Mendel’s law, based on the division of genes into recessive and dominant. In simple terms, dark color is stronger in genetics than light. So, for example, parents with dark eyes have a great chance to get their little dark-eyed copy. Mom and dad with bright eyes most often have a bright-eyed baby. If the shade of the iris in the parents varies, then the color of the eyes of the newborn will be dark - dominant or intermediate. But this is only in theory, in practice, everything is a little more complicated. Even great learned minds cannot predict the characteristics of a future baby.
Percentage ratio
Based on the above law, modern genetic scientists have calculated the percentage of appearance of a baby with a particular eye color. The pattern looks like this:
- If both parents have a blue tint of the iris, it means that with a probability of 99% a blue-eyed baby will be born, but there is 1% that the color of the eyes of the newborn will be green.
- Surprisingly, the brown-eyed mom and dad can have a baby with any color of the iris. The approximate ratio looks like this: brown - 75%, green - 18%, and blue - 7%.
- If the father and mother are green-eyed, then the color of the iris in the baby can turn out like this: green - 75%, blue - 24%, brown - 1%.
- If one of the parents has blue eyes and the other has green, then the likelihood of inheriting the color of the iris by the baby is the same, it can be equally the same as that of the mother, and that of the father.
- If one of the parents is brown-eyed and the other green-eyed, the child's color of the iris may be as follows: brown - 50%, green - 37%, blue - 13%.
- Parents with brown and blue eyes have an equal chance of getting a blue-eyed or brown-eyed baby from a stork.
Genetic Features
Most often, the color of the eyes is transmitted to the child from the parents. But there are situations when the shade is fundamentally different from mom's and dad's, and they begin to sound the alarm. Do not run to the clinic for a DNA test, because dominant genes can appear even after several generations. So, for example, it may turn out that the great-grandmother on the father's side was a burning brunette with brown eyes, but everyone forgot about it after so many years. Genes can be transmitted from grandparents, especially dominant ones. Dark-eyed people are the most numerous on earth. Their iris contains a large amount of pigment. If a child with a blue or green eye color has even small dark spots, then the shade of the iris can subsequently change greatly.
Only recently it became known that the blue color of the eyes is a mutation in the human genome that happened about 6,000 years ago. This happened on the territory of modern Eurasia, so most light-eyed people are born here. Many rules have exceptions. In addition to inconsistencies with genetic calculations, there are more interesting cases. For example, heterochromia or albinism. These are the genetic characteristics of the body that are inherited or acquired.
Heterochromia
With heterochromia, a person has a different eye color. This anomaly is associated with unequal staining of the iris. Most often it is inherited, but it can also be acquired. This pathology happens for medical reasons with damage to the iris. This can be a chronic eye disease or a metal fragment that has fallen. Genetic heterochromia appears in several forms: complete, sector, or central. At full, each iris is painted in its own color, the most common type is brown / blue. With the sector form of heterochromia, one eye has many different shades, and with the central one, the iris has several colored rings.
Albinism
This is a rare hereditary disease in which the body practically does not produce pigment. The pathological gene affects the production of melanin, hence the lack of coloring pigment in the skin, hair and iris. Eye color in newborns with such a genetic feature is bright scarlet. Subsequently, it becomes light blue or whitish. In case of ocular albinism, pigment deficiency is present only in the iris; such people have normal color hair and skin. At risk are parents who have albinos in the genus. This pathological gene can appear even after many years.
Features of vision in infants
The color of the eyes in the newborn is variable. It changes, and with it the vision itself. When the baby was in his mother’s stomach, he did not need to see. After birth, gradual adaptation begins to occur, because there are so many interesting things around! During the first month, the baby’s eyes get used to daylight, the muddy ceiling, which served as a kind of protection, disappears. Visual acuity comes gradually. At two months the baby can already focus his eyes. Together with vision, the brain also develops. The kid begins to process incoming information. He learns to connect objects, sounds, smells and touches, all the images that surround him. Closer to a year, the child’s vision is not at all the same as that of an adult. Further development of the baby helps to remember visual images, helps to assess the distance to the subject, the colors become brighter and more saturated. By the age of 3 years, the farsightedness characteristic of them from birth disappears in infants. A child develops eyeballs, develops eye muscles and the optic nerve. The organs of vision are finally formed only by 7 years.
Greatest happiness
It does not matter what color the eyes will be in the newborn, who he will look like. Do not be afraid of his small, slightly unclear eyes, a helpless scream or ridiculous movements with arms and legs. The kid knows the world, and you know it! After all, he may have a mom’s nose, and dad’s ears, hairs are the same as those of the older sister, and lips, like that of her beloved granny. Soon the gaze will become clear. Seeing you, the baby will smile broadly and will consciously stretch out his tiny hands to you. At this moment, it will become completely unimportant what color the baby has eyes, because they have the most beautiful eyes in the world!