Eye Color

[pinkposey]

Hi - I'm searching for a clear and easy explanation as to why and how babies eyes change color. Anyone got any ideas? Does it happen overnight or does it gradually happen? What age is it most common to happen. I'm so intrigued as my son has bright blue eyes, but I'm positive these must be going to change to be brown in the end.

My ds has dark brown eyes now but they were never bright blue. When he was born they were such a dark blue it was almost black. By the time he was 3 weeks old they were definately brown though.

I don't know why it happens but I've heard it also happens with kittens. Maybe it is something to do with babies having bad eyesight when they are born then as it develops the colour changes? (Talking shit emoticon needed here maybe )

If he has bright blue eyes I would say they won't change - my DD had the same at birth and wound up with blue eyes. I have brown eyes but my DP has blue eyes and so does my dad so it is entirely possible a brown eyed person can have a blue eyed child. Apparently it is genetically impossible for 2 blue eyed people to have a brown eyed child as the gene for brown eyes is dominant so if you have it you will have brown eyes - it is impossible to have a recessive brown eye gene - or so I have heard (not being a geneticist myself!)

My Ds was born with blue eyes and it took over 12 months for his eyes to gradually change to the greeny-brown colour they now are. It definitely doesn't happen over night. I found this explanation on the net
"The color of a person?s eyes depends on the amount of a pigment called melanin present in the iris of the eye (melanin is also responsible for the coloring of our skin). At each end of the spectrum you have blue-eyed people, who have relatively small amounts of melanin, while brown-eyed people at the other end have lots of melanin present. People with other eye colors generally fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. What determines how much melanin is present in the iris is determined by hereditary genetics."

DD born with blue eyes (a sort of middle blue - not light, not very dark either). they first changes to a stunning green (around 4 month). by her 1st birthday they were brown and stayed that way :-)

Thought I'd just posted this but it seems to have disappeared so here it is again!

People sometimes report eye colour changing even into adulthood, which as described above is probably due to amounts of melanin maybe?

In babies, you often find babies are born with blue eyes that change colour and people often think all babies are born with blue eyes. This is because when babies eyes are developing in the womb and first develop colour they are always blue (think this is because of lack of melanin which increases over time), this sometimes changes before birth, shortly after birth or changes gradually.

I'm blue eyed, my DH is brown eyed.
Both our DDs have blue eyes - one of them bright bright freaky looking blue eyes.
being our 1st we were waiting for her eyes to change colour, and I guess they did - just bluer and bluer.
DD2 has a little speckle of brown in hers, but is still a bright blue. You can kind of tell they are sisters

My DD1 had grey-blue eyes for a long long time and now, at 2.5 they seem to be getting lighter, and more greeney which is the opposite of what I expected to happen.

My DD2s eyes were a similar colour at birth but started to go darker. I thought they'd go brown like mine but at the moment they are a greeny, speckly colour with brown around the iris. She's 8 months and I have no idea what they'll end up like.

pediatrics.about.com/od/yourbabyweekbyweek/ss/baby_wk_ten_3.htm

quite good explanation here