My baby looks nothing like me...

[Grapef]

I always used to joke about this with my friends. My DH has a daughter already who is a spitting image of him and looks nothing like her mum. It was always the running joke that our son would be the same...

Turns out this is the case and my son looks nothing like me. I'm mixed race with quite dark skin and DS is pale as can be with blue eyes like DH.

AIBU to think he's the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen, but to also be a bit sad that I look like the babysitter?

Not read all the thread.

It’s handy when your DC don’t look like you because you can pretend you are the nanny when they are acting up. Mine all have a different accent to me too which doesn’t help.

I found it a bit irritating when my MIL used to say how much each kid looked like XX [ insert name of HER relative] but unfortuanately she was always right. My DDs look more like her than they do me. Luckily she is a lovely woman who was stunning when she was younger.

DD is mixed race, and was the spitting image of her dad when she was born. At 2 she is identical to me at that age, just with darker hair, skin and eyes. I have also read somewhere that babies looking like their dad is nature's paternity test, as that's the only indication a man has that the baby is definitely his.

My youngest looks nothing lime my husband and me. Embarrassingly enough, he looks a lot like our childminder... My husband and i are both short and dark haired - youngest is tall and blond. childminder is scandinavian descent, tall and blond. youngest comes after my (swedish) paternal grandmother, so we know why, but its still confusing at times

Our Dd doesn't look like either of us

Our little imposter

add on: our childminder is male!

I have Generalised Anxiety Disorder which is now well controlled (thanks to a fabulous CBT counsellor) but when I had DD1, it unsurprisingly went a bit haywire. I was CONVINCED there was a mix up in the hospital when her ankle tag fell off and I went to get a slice of toast and she wasn't my baby.

Then DMIL showed me a picture of DH as a baby which could actually be DD1.

Aren't babies supposed to look like their fathers to help bonding or something??

You're not alone OP.

I’ve produced three mini dh’s.

All 3 ds’s are the spit of dh and you’d never know I was related to them 🤷🏻‍♀️

My nan initially tried the whole ‘oh he looks just like my brother/father/uncle’ thing with each ds...but this quickly stopped because it’s patently obvious they’re nothing like our side of the family at all!

It's amazing how they morph as they grow older - he may look more like you later. But also, he may have more of your characteristics, which people also notice as well as looks.

Mil kept going on about how much the children looked like her and DH to the point of awkwardness. She got out every single photo she could find of DH as a child desperate to see any glimmer of similarity in any of them. She would rifle thru and triumphantly hold one up and say 'here, this one, isn't ds1 the spit of DH?' and everyone would look and mumble and stare out the window. I once eventually snapped and said to her I could not see any resemblance at all and I didn't know what she was looking at as they were nothing alike.

We have the opposite in my family. Both my parents sides insisted I was the spit of the other side of the family and look nothing like them - Usually in a disgusted way at the suggestion I may belong to them in some way!

As babies my 2 were just like their dad as a baby.

Son still very like his dad, but with similarities to me.

Daughter very like me although a tall, slim,pale, blonde version!

When my daughter was born in a Mediterranean country she had very dark hair and olive skin, totally unlike either of us, my local friends would say 'I smell garlic', apparently a phrase doubting her parentage! As she got to be 1 she was very fair.
I once knew a couple with a boy of about 7, he was the spitting image of his Dad, it was only after I'd known them for a while that I discovered that the boy was adopted and had no blood connection to either of them.

Don't worry OP.
DS 1 looked like Elton John.
DS 2 looked like a boiled hairy turnip.
Neither of them looked like a logical genetic result of their parents.
That was fine by me cos I thought they were gorgeous and that I was a massively clever and amazing being for eventually getting them out of my vagina
They change so much as they get older.
I love the unique little beings that they are.

Dd looks nothing like me! And she's nearly 18! When she was born she was even darker than now (olive skin now, almost light African looking then), and basically had a black Afro when born, eyes so dark brown they often looked black.

She looks like ex (v dark southern med/North African colouring and features) is her father & my sis (olive skin, dark hair & eyes, but mainly its feature shape) her mother - genetics are weird! She even has a tic when she's tired that my sister has!

Now that you can get those DNA tests that tell you your ancestry I'm tempted to get dd to do one, while ex is supposedly a northerner through and through he and his dad are very dark, with dark very curly thick hair, broad noses and very full lips, I'm sure he must have arab or other African DNA, really wouldn't surprise me. While we were together he was often asked/believed to be mixed race. Also because his father knows nothing about his biological dad, his mum got pregnant "out of wedlock" and apparently the father basically bolted the mum then met husband/stepdad. Exes dad never knew his stepdad wasn't his real dad until he was an adult and his mum refused to talk about his biological dad so my ex doesn't fully know his ancestry.

However, one of sisters children looks like me & neither parent. Both parents dark everything and chunky bodies, Dn is very fair like me, very slim (I used to be sigh) with a little tummy though (that'll be needing an eye kept on). Same eye & mouth shape too.

I look like NEITHER parent but instead my maternal gran. Redheads, pale slightly freckly skin, Apple body shapes with great legs 😂

My mum looks like her dad, dark hair, eyes & skin, slim pear shape with slightly chunky legs (sorry mum!) dad is like his dad - absolute clone of him! Sis looks like my mum to the point in photos taken of them where they're the same age it's hard to tell difference - ie photos of them taken when each were 20 they look identical! The only way we know the difference is the fashions. So I suppose really dd looks a cross of my ex & mum!

Friends there's several I can think of where nieces/nephews are the spit of aunts/uncles rather than parents, one looks like a parents cousin but nothing like parents/grandparents or aunts/uncles - where's the evolutionary explanation for that?!

On race genetics I have a friend who's parents are both dark mixed race but she's blonde & pale skinned & blue eyes with Afro texture hair. She's often been asked if she's adopted etc so doesn't surprise me the comments from mixed race parents or parents of mixed race children here.

So me & sibs:

Me - don't look like ANY of them but look like my gran.

Bro - fair version of dad

Sis - spit of mum.

AIBU to think he's the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen, but to also be a bit sad that I look like the babysitter?

^
Laughed at this. I live abroad where English isn't the first language : so many a time I've been asked if I'm the nanny! (I speak English to the kids)

Genetics are fascinating. My half-Indian (and quite dark) best friend has two DC. Her DD is the absolute image of her: dark olive skin, thick dark hair and deep brown eyes, same features. Yet her DS has the palest white skin, freckles, fine red hair and light blue eyes and looks nothing like either my friend or her DH (but he does resemble his paternal grandfather.) Amazing how genes express themselves in families.

My DD is definitely a 'DH's surname' baby. They all looked the same and were huge (I wish someone had told me about their large heads beforehand haha )

She has my earlobes though. That's it. 42 hrs of labour for earlobes

@ComtesseDeSpair - genes are so strange. All of my full Indian neices / nephews have light skin / brown hair and grey eyes. While my mixed race (white) neices have thick curly black hair / brown eyes / skin like me. They’re all gorgeous though.

My DH used to joke that he knew who the father was but not so sure about the mother........
My Mum would desperately look at my youngest and try and find some of me in there.
He is more like me now he’s 4.
My eldest is a mix of me and DH but she has all the best bits.
Both siblings look like each other

I jokingly asked for a maternity test,

DS looked like me when he was born, but as he's got older he has started to resemble his dad more and more - all DH's family look like clones of each other as adults. He looks nothing like me now.

DS13 looks the exact replica of his Dad.

DS7 looks the exact replica of his Dad.

The dog (a blonde spaniel) looks like me, though, so I tell people I'm the Nanny and that only the dog is mine when they're acting like goats.

Also, the absolute best part of them looking like their Dad is when their personalities began to emerge everyone assumed they'd take after DH (very gentle, patient and quiet) and it turned out they were massive gobshites like their Mother. Poor, poor, children.

My dd looks like her dad and MIL

Have you got any old photos of ancestors? Im sure your genes are in there somewhere. And they do change as they get older.

My mums side of the family have olive skin, brown eyes and ginger hair. Both her parents, grandparents, siblings and their children look similar to this/have one or two of these traits.

My dads side of the family have olive skin, brown eyes and blonde hair. Both his parents, grandparents, siblings and their children look similar to this/have one or two of these traits - apart from one cousin, who has ginger hair.

My siblings are all olive skin, brown eyes and blonde hair and look similar and I am pale, blue eyes and brown hair

I must get my features from further back in the family!