The birth of the long-awaited baby is a huge joy for parents.
Mother stares intently at the face of the newborn, admires the "familiar stranger", noting the slightest features of his appearance.
Who will the baby look like? What will his eye color be?
Why does a newborn's eye color change
Almost all babies are born with cloudy, light eyes of a bluish tint. In rare cases, the color of the iris is dark from birth, and over time it will turn brown or black.
It's all about a special pigment that determines the color of human skin, hair, eyes. It's about melanin. At the birth of a baby, there is practically no melanin in the iris. But after just a few days, the newborn’s body will begin to adapt to the changing conditions of existence, melanocyte cells will activate, and the physiological process of accumulation of melanin in the iris will begin. The eyes will gradually become clear, and by the time of the month of life, the turbidity usually disappears, although the color of the iris will change more than once. When the eyes of a newborn change, one cannot say in advance.
A child is born with a set of parental genes, but under the influence of the external environment they can change. In other words, on the basis of the individual characteristics of the development of the infant, conditions arise for the formation of the phenotype. Heredity and individuality - this is what the color of the baby's eyes depends on. Moreover, during the first months and even years of life, it is impossible to finally answer the question of what the color of the iris will be.
Accumulation of melanin occurs gradually. Sometimes the process ends in the first months of life, sometimes it drags on for several years. In any case, when the eyes of a newborn change, there is no danger. This is not a disease, but a finer “tuning” of the complex genetic system of the body to environmental parameters. The baby is growing, and the color of the iris is gradually changing.
What can be the color of the eyes in a child
The vast majority of children are born either blue-eyed or brown-eyed. If there is a lot of melanin at the birth of a baby in the iris, it will be dark, slightly bluish.
Albinos who suffer from a lack of pigment generally have a frighteningly scarlet iris color at birth. This is also not dangerous, just blood shines through the vessels and mucous membranes of the eye. In adulthood, albino people tend to have light blue eyes.
Modern science, explaining the peculiarities of the color of human eyes, takes the famous Mendel law as a basis. If you do not delve into the theory, the bottom line is this: dominant genes are responsible for dark pigments.
Apart from Mendel, other scholars, for example, Darwin and Lamarck, also dealt with the problem of external differences between children and parents. As a result, there were not only rules, but also exceptions. What does it mean:
• indeed, if both parents have dark eyes, then the children are likely to be born with dark eyes;
• light-eyed parents will give children bright eyes;
• if parents have different eye colors, then children can take both a darker, dominant, shade, and intermediate (meaning color intensity).
In biology classes, when studying the basics of genetics, children are invited to solve the problem of determining a recessive and dominant gene. The birth of man, as well as his appearance on Earth or, for example, technical development, instantaneous from the point of view of space clocks, still represents a big mystery.
Scientists still do not know exactly when the newborn’s eyes change, and can only guess what the color of his eyes will be.
The pattern is as follows.
• Mother and father have blue eyes: the eyes of a newborn will be 99 percent blue, although in one percent of cases the iris may turn green.
• Mother and father have brown eyes: 75 percent iris will be brown, 18 percent green, seven percent blue.
• Mother and father have green eyes: in 75 percent of cases, the iris will have a green tint, in 24 percent it will be blue, and there is only one out of a hundred chance that the baby will be born brown-eyed.
• One parent has green eyes, the other blue: children will be either green-eyed or blue-eyed (fifty to fifty).
• One parent has green eyes, the second is brown: in fifty percent the iris will be brown, in 37 percent green, the remaining 13 percent is a chance to be born blue-eyed.
• One parent has brown eyes, the other has blue: an equal fifty percent chance of having brown-eyed or blue-eyed offspring (green iris is not possible).
In general, the second law of Mendel only provides an approximate idea of how the baby will actually be born. When the color of the eyes of a newborn changes, some parents may be surprised.
Features of eye color and vision in newborns
The turbidity of the eyes of a newborn baby is explained by the peculiarities of the adaptation of the body. In the womb of the mother, the baby did not need eyesight, since there was neither sunlight, nor visual perspective. After the birth of adaptation mechanisms are included. About a month later, there is a daylight setting. Postpartum opacification of the iris disappears.
Moreover, visual acuity is gradually increasing. The organs of vision synchronize the work with the brain. In the first days after birth, the eyes are able to see the world around them, but the brain is not able to process the incoming information. Items gradually emerge from the outside world, the baby gradually learns to correlate sound, visual image, touch, smell, air movement, etc. together.
Therefore, you should not be afraid of either the indefinite color of the eyes of a newborn, or the turbidity of the iris, or the coordination of movements. Everything is normal with the baby: his brain works in full force and his vision is in order. A little time will pass, and some turbidity will disappear, a social smile will appear (when the child learns to recognize his mother and loved ones), movements will become more accurate.
But the color of the eyes will not be established soon. It all depends on the rate of accumulation of melanin. This process is controlled by genes and taking into account environmental conditions. Moreover, the process includes not only parental genes, but the gene pool of the ancestors of the newborn. In some babies, the color of the iris changes not once, or even twice, but several times during the first years of life.
What eye color will the child have
Even scientists are not able to say exactly what the color of the eyes of a newborn baby will be. Almost everything depends on the color of the eyes of the parents, the color of the iris of grandparents on both sides is much less important. Dominant genes can occur through generation. The light color of the iris indicates the presence of recessive genes.
Dark-eyed parents are easier: in the vast majority of cases, they have a brown-eyed baby. And yet, the probability of the birth of blue-eyed crumbs in them remains. Dark-eyed people (the color of the iris is brown, black, black and brown) are the owners of a record amount of melanin in the iris. According to statistics, this is the majority of the inhabitants of the Earth.
If there are dark specks in the blue or greenish iris, then the eyes can change their color very much over time. In general, scientists came to an interesting conclusion: the blue iris is a consequence of a mutation that happened about 6 thousand years ago. It is clear that this happened on the territory of Eurasia, therefore, Russian and European babies most often have gray-blue or blue eyes.
Important details:
• if the eyes of the newborn are dark, they will not change, except in color intensity or shade;
• if the baby was born blue-eyed, then the parents will mark the first changes in the color of the iris by the first month of life;
• if there are dark dots on the iris, then the eyes can darken a lot.
By the way, in many light-eyed people, eye color also changes throughout life. This does not depend on genetic characteristics, but on other factors. For example, if the eyes are naturally gray-blue, then under certain lighting conditions or in minutes of strong emotional experiences, they can become piercing blue or gray.
Rarely, but there are times when a child with heterochromia is born. This is a rare phenomenon, the essence of which is incomprehensible, and the external manifestation is unusual: the right and left eyes have a different color of the iris. For example, blue and brown, green and brown, blue and gray.
Heterochromia can be detected immediately or become apparent later when the eyes of a newborn change. It is important to understand that this is not a disease, but a feature. However, it does not hurt to control vision and periodically appear to the optometrist.
When the color of the eyes of a newborn changes
Parents will notice the first color changes 2-3 weeks after the birth of the baby. The clouding of the infant's gaze, known to all parents, will pass, and along with the muddy veil, the initial shade of the eyes will change.
However, eye color will remain uncertain for at least another three months. Of course, this is a rough estimate, and the iris can get a clear color earlier. But in most cases, especially if the child is light-eyed, the color of the iris will become apparent precisely by three months.
This does not mean that it has been established for life. Parents will be surprised to note that during the first year of life, almost every month, the eyes of the crumbs change color. Sunlight, acting on melanocytes, will affect the accumulation of melanin. This is a slow process, and in many ways mysterious. When does a newborn’s eyes change completely and irrevocably? No doctor or scientist will answer this question.
A rough picture may look like this:
from six months to 8 months, a radical change in the color of the iris can occur. For example, the brown-eyed baby becomes green-eyed, and the blue-eyed baby becomes gray-eyed;
a change in the color of the iris may occur later. However, the time of cardinal changes does not exceed two years. At this age, eye color is already fully determined;
but the change in the shade of the iris can continue further. It will finally be clear what eyes the baby has, only after five years.
Thus, the answer to the question of concern to many parents when the eyes of a newborn changes is ambiguous. The period of change of color and shade of the iris is long in time. The process can last from six months to five years.
