When does eye color change in newborns?

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

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 he looks like, what color his eyes will be. This article will tell you what color the eyes of newborns are and when it starts to change.

Special Pigment

Most babies are born with the same hazy gray-blue eyes. Sometimes the iris has a dark tint - this means that the child will have brown or black irises. A special pigment, melanin, is responsible for the shade, 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 birth, 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 disappears, but the shade remains the same. Not always the color shade of the rainbowthe shell of the child is the same as that of the parents. This leads to questions from new mothers about whether the color of the eyes changes in newborns.

Heredity

A baby at birth inherits the genes of both parents, but they can change under the influence of the characteristics of the child's development. It is the heredity and individuality of a small organism that are responsible for when the color of the eyes of a newborn changes. Usually, changes in the color of the iris begin after a few months and can drag on for several years. Of course, the shade will form earlier, the changes will affect only its intensity. But even doctors cannot say for sure when the color of the eyes in newborns changes, at what months or years this will happen.

Who is stronger

The birth of a person is a miracle and still an unsolved mystery for scientists. No one can know in advance what a child will look like, whose set of genes will be stronger. Part of the mystery reveals Mendel's law, based on the division of genes into recessive and dominant. In simple terms, a dark color is stronger genetically than a light color. So, for example, parents with dark eyes have a great chance of getting their little dark-eyed copy. Mom and dad with light eyes most often have a light-eyed baby. If the shade of the iris of 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 scientific minds cannot predict the characteristics of an unborn baby.

Percentageratio

Based on the above law, modern genetic scientists have calculated the percentage of a baby with one or another eye color. The pattern looks like this:

• If both parents have a blue tint of the iris, then with a probability of 99% a blue-eyed baby will be born, but there is a 1% that the color of the eyes of the newborn will be green.
• A brown-eyed mom and dad, surprisingly, 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 baby's iris can turn out like this: green - 75%, blue - 24%, brown - 1%.
• If one of the parents has blue eyes and the other has green eyes, then the probability of inheriting the color of the iris by the baby is the same, it can be equally like that of mom and dad.
• If one of the parents is brown-eyed and the other is green-eyed, the child's iris color can be: 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. You should 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 passed down 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 blue or green eyes has even small dark blotches, 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 of the human genome, which happened about 6000 years ago. It 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 an organism that are inherited or acquired.

Heterochromia

With heterochromia, a person has a different eye color. This anomaly is associated with unequal coloration of the irises. Most often it is inherited, but it can also be acquired. Such a pathology occurs for medical reasons when the iris is damaged. These can be chronic eye diseases or a metal fragment that has fallen. Genetic heterochromia manifests itself in several forms: complete, sectoral or central. When full, each iris has its own color, the most common type being brown/blue. With a sector form of heterochromia, one eye has many differentshades, and at the central iris there are 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. The eye color of newborns with this genetic feature is bright scarlet. Subsequently, it becomes light blue or whitish. With ocular albinism, the lack of pigment is present only in the iris, the hair and skin of such people are of normal color. At risk are parents who have met albinos in the genus. This pathological gene can appear even after many years.

Features of vision in infants

The color of the eyes of a newborn is fickle. It changes, and with it, vision itself. When the baby was in the 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 veil disappears, which served as a kind of protection. Visual acuity comes gradually. At two months, the child can already focus his eyes. Along with vision, the brain also develops. The baby begins to process the incoming information. He learns to connect objects, sounds, smells and touches, all the images that surround him. Closer to a year, the vision of a child is still not at all the same as that of an adult. Furtherthe development of the baby contributes to the memorization of visual images, helps to assess the distance to the subject, the colors become brighter and more saturated. By the age of 3, farsightedness, characteristic of them from birth, disappears in infants. The child is the growth of the eyeballs, the development of the eye muscles and the optic nerve. The organs of vision are finally formed only by the age of 7.

The greatest happiness

It doesn't matter what color the eyes of the newborn will be, who he will look like. Do not be afraid of his small, slightly cloudy eyes, helpless cry or ridiculous movements of arms and legs. The kid knows the world, and you know it! After all, he can have his mother’s nose, and his father’s ears, hairs are the same as those of his older sister, and lips, like those of his beloved granny. Soon the vision will become clear. Seeing you, the baby will smile broadly and consciously stretch out his tiny hands to you. At this moment, it will not matter at all what color the baby's eyes are, because they are the most beautiful in the world!