As a new parent, it is normal to wonder what the color of your newborn baby’s eyes will be. However, you can not always tell what your baby’s eye color will be since it all depends on the genetic material that the parents contribute.
Further, some babies tend to experience a change in their eye color within their first year, especially for the light-eyed and fair-skinned young ones.
Well, in this article, we shall have an in-depth discussion about a baby’s eye color and how you can determine how your young one will turn out. Read on to find out.
What is Eye Color?
This refers to the appearance of the iris, which is the black part of the eye and regulates the amount of light entering the eye. It has a wide variety of colors ranging from pale blue to extremely dark brown.
It is also worth mentioning that the young one’s pupils will always be black while the sclera of the eyes is almost sure to be white. Note that there are conditions that may lead to the sclera’s change in colors, such as inflammations that lead to pink or red colors or jaundice which may result in yellow color.
Development of Eye Color
Let’s now go deeper into how the baby’s eye color develops, and we shall start by mentioning that what we call eye color is a combination of pigments produced in the stroma, which is a layer in the iris.
There are three different such pigments, namely Melanin, Eumelanin, and Pheomelanin.
Melanin is the yellow-brown pigment that is also responsible for the skin’s tone. Then, Eumelanin is a black-brown pigment that determines hue saturation, while Pheomelanin is a red-orange pigment that causes red hair in green and hazel-eyed babies.
The combination of these pigments, their dispersal, and their absorption by the stroma determines the eyes’ appearance. So, the newborn’s eyes could end up being blue, brown, gray, hazel, green, or blue.
Predicting the Eye Color
The primary determinant of eye color is genetics, whereby one chromosome will determine the eye color. It features two genes whereby one determines the amount of melanin in the iris while the other will control the activity of the melanocytes.
These are the main genes responsible for eye color, while other smaller ones play minor roles in the entire process.
Another thing is that even though you may not always get your prediction accurate by looking at your’s and your partner’s eye color, you may get it right at times.
For instance:
*Your baby is likely to have blue eyes if you and your partner have blue eyes
*The newborn is highly likely to have blue eyes if one of your grandparents have blue eyes
*If your partner has blue eyes and you have brown ones, your baby’s chances of having either color is at 50%
Conclusion
There numerous factors affecting the baby’s eye color other than the parents’, with genetics being the main factor. Once you understand the genetics of eye color, you will be on the right path towards determining your child’s eye color, although it is not always certain.
We hope you are now in an excellent position to determine your newborn’s eye color with utmost accuracy.
