to wonder where my redheaded blue-eyed baby came from?

[retrocutie]

So, we have just had a gorgeous little DD. We are very happy, she is lovely. Her brothers love her and everything's great. We were just a bit shocked by what she looks like...

My DH is Mediterranean, so very swarthy and dark. Our DS's look just like him. I am pale with light blonde hair and green eyes. Our DSs have dark hair and eyes like DH.

However, DD has bright ginger hair and blue eyes! How did this happen? I didn't think it was possible, genetically speaking? I feel that people are a bit and wondering if I had an affair (I didn't). Has anybody heard of this before? I just want to have an answer ready for the next time somebody asks me. Thanks.

People sometimes claim that our brown eyes at birth must come from an Indian heritage, but as that line certainly hasn't left East Anglia from the 1600s until the 1950s, it seems unlikely. We must have very good 'brown eyes'. One thing that I have noticed is that our eye colour fades with age. My father is now in his 80s(he was in his 40s when I was born) and his eyes are hazel, whereas when I was a child and he was my age, they were dark brown, as people would comment on having 'his' eyes. I would say that my eyes are lighter now than when I was younger, but still brown, just more milk chocolate rather than plain (like my dc). I guess it might be the reduced melatonin, his hair is greying, mine isn't yet .

DD was full on ginger at birth but 8 months on is blonde.

badbride

I met someone recently with one blue and one brown eye - how does that work?

Many years ago I was that red haired baby, though it wasn't a surprise to anyone! My hair used to be a lovely colour which I only started to appreciate in my twenties. People always used to compliment me on it and once someone on a bus asked what colour I used on it! These days I have to use a colour to cover the grey, but I have a really good colourist.
And yes, it's due to a recessive gene!

@Rooney

Yes, most babies are born with pale eyes and don't develop their full adult colour until the age of 3-5 months. If you can bear to wade through all the jargon, it's in the 5th para of the scientific article about eye colour here: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3259577/

My explanation of something "not working properly" is a bit of a simplification, especially as scientists don't have the full story about eye colour genetics yet. By "not working properly" I don't necessarily mean "total malfunction"; it's more a question of degree.

A total malfunction in one of the steps needed to make eye colour pigment, for example, could make you an albino (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albinism). But imagine a scenario where one of more of the steps isn't completely broken, but yet isn't working quite as fast or as efficiently as it could. So you end up making less pigment.

Alternatively, the process that gets the pigment into the pigment-carrying cells in the eye could be a tad under par. Or you could have fewer of these pigment cells in your eye anyway. Result: paler eyes.

So the bottom line is, yes, you could have a mild genetic malfunction. Or simply a more/less efficient process producing your pigmentation.
Either way, it works massively in your favour. Because it will also give you the pale skin you need to survive in the sunless wastes of the northern hemisphere. Too much pigment would hamper your skin's ability to make vitamin D from what little sunlight we get, resulting in rickets and immune deficiency.

I'm not an expert in human genetics, but I'm not aware of any secondary effects of pigmentation genes on health. There is a famous example in mice though, called the agouti yellow gene.

The agouti gene affects how the pigment gets into the hair follicles of the mouse. The agouti gene makes a substance that stops pigment from getting in to the base of the hair, resulting in a banded hair with a yellow base and dark tip.

Mice with one copy of the "yellow" version of the gene make too much of this substance. This means that no brown pigment gets into the hair and the mice are all yellow. They are also all obese, because the extra agouti gene substance also happens to block a process in the brain that controls eating. The mice don't know when to stop eating, and so balloon to an enormous size.

I have one too. A boy with strawberry blonde hair and bright blue eyes :) I have brown eyes and hair, dh has dark hair but green eyes. He looks nothing like us!

Same here. Dh family has alot of italian. But ds2 is totally ginger. As others have said we do both have red in both our families, so I guess that is why it happens.

@ badbride really interesting information for me to attempt to understand with my non scientific brain! Can you settle a debate I had with a friend recently and still isn't resolved? Are all Caucasian babies born with blue eyes? And can Asian/black babies be born with blue eyes? Obviously if mixed race they might or might not be born with blue eyes right? Sorry if slightly off the point but no one has ever given me an answer to this.

Our DD was born with very dark blue eyes, almost violet. Her dad and I both have blue eyes, ordinary blue. I hoped DD's eyes would stay that unusual colour but they got lighter and are now normal blue (although lovely of course!!!)

@sashh

It's called heterochromia iridum (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterochromia_iridum) and can be caused by a number of things.

Sometimes, a gene needed to produce pigment gets switched off or broken in some, but not all, of the cells in the body as a baby develops in the womb. If some of those cells go on to make one of the eyes, you get one blue eye and one brown.

It can also be caused by disease or injury.

People always ask where dd1 gets her blonde hair from because DH, dd2 and DSD all have medium brown hair and blue eyes. I now have almost black hair because I dye it, but my natural hair colour is blonde, so she obviously gets it from me. But it's not obvious to people who don't know that.

@inadream Yup, Caucausian babies' eyes appear blue at birth because the pigment-containing cells take 3-5 months to appear in the iris (the coloured part of the eye). Asian/ black babies can also be born with pale (grey) eyes. If you want an "official" source for that, scroll down to para 5 of this scientific paper (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3259577/), where it says:

"The final adult iris colour is not present at birth, and in Caucasians the neonatal iris is blue as a result of a paucity of stromal melanocytes, which, presumably, have yet to migrate from the neural crest or differentiate from the primitive precursor cells. In non-White races the iris appears slate grey at birth. The iris normally adopts its true adult colour by the age of 3?5 months."

By way of translation, "melanocytes" are the pigment-containing cells. You also have them in your skin, and they are the cells that go wrong in the skin cancer malignant melanoma. So another useless science factoid for you: the fact you have melanocytes in your eyes means you can also get melanoma in your eyes. So don't forget your sunglasses as well as your suncream!

There will have been red hair in the mix at some point. Nice suprise eh - congratulations! This happened to me but I do know where the red hair came from (DHs side of the family)
I'm mixed race (half Thai). Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin.
DS1 (nearly 6) came out ginger with blue eyes, DS2 had gold hair, blue eyes.
DS1 shed his ginger and grew light blonde hair which has gradually gone ashy/dark blonde - his eyes are now greeny-grey. His skin has always had an olive tone.
DS2 has stayed blonde but lost the gold colour and its gradually getting darker (hes only 3) His eyes are still blue but not as bright as when he was a baby. His skin is peachy pink toned.

Lots of lovely examples of how genetics is not as simple as they would have you believe in school!

My sisters baby boy is ginger and blue eyed... My brother in law is dark and Jewish my sister is brown haired and green eyes. He calls baby his 'ginger Jew'! V cute. But no they didn't see that one coming either!

This is so interesting! I'm mixed race. Mum was Italian/Russian dad was West Indian, I look Brazilian very dark long brown hair dark eyes etc, my DH is Scandinavian blonde looking naturaly tanned all year round etc.
Our daughter is white blonde white skinned and pale blue eyes, no nod to her West Indian grandfather or me as her mother at all!
Just get asked if I'm the nanny alot!

Thanks badbride so neither my friend or I were right - she said all babies have blue eyes at birth regardless of race and I said I thought it was only caucasian babies or part caucasian/mixed race babies! I always wear sunglasses when it's sunny as I get uncomfortable without them. Genetics is so complicated!

I will have to tell my Mum now that the friend she always insisted couldn't be the real father of his child may very well be (both parents dark eyes mediterranian origin - the son is blue eyed and average skintone/brown hair).

Not all Caucasian babies have blue eyes either. DH and I are both Caucasian and dd2 had dark brown eyes at birth.

In answer to your title: your vagina.

@Fakebook Actually, there is a scientifically proven correlation between the size of the stork population and the birth rate in Northern Europe see here. So vaginas may have nothing to do with it

Thanks ever so much, Badbride (it's me, Rooney)

The mouse thing is really interesting, and reading on (just back from school) you mention melanoma. That was what I was thinking of when I asked about illnesses and susceptibility.

I think people with pale skin, blue/green eyes and freckles are more susceptible but not sure if this is a genetic thing or just the lack of pigment being correlatory iyswim. I guess they don't know everything about it yet.

Thanks again for all the useful info, it's fascinating.

@Rooney/ Bangham Glad to be of service

One of my sisters friends, have 2 children, both are blonde hair and blue eyed, not like either parent, its just a case of genetics, what genes you carry and want genes present, my DD has green eyes, i have blue and her dad has brown, so she kinda fell inbetween.

My dad is strawberry blonde with blue eyes. Mum is v v dark olive colouring with brown eyes. All the rest of the family is mums colouring. I'm a bright redhead with green eyes and deathly pale

I should say people assume my cousins are my mums children. A recent funeral had all the family there with their tanned skin and black/brown hair. Then me

Hmm genes can appear quite random, but there's always an explanation deep in the family tree. Me and DH have dark hair, always have, and the kids are faintest blonde. Weird.