Babies, when they are born, may have bright eyes, but later change color
With frequent questions about when a baby begins to sit, crawl, and walk, many parents are interested in the color of their child’s eyes. Will the babies o chi stay so bright? Will the baby eventually have Dad’s blue eyes? Or will she be like mom, brown-eyed? Why does your child have a much darker eye color than his siblings? And why do babies change their eye color at all?
When babies are born, especially those with fair skin, they have a light eye color due to very little melanin in their eyes. Melanin is a pigment that gives color to the eyes, skin, and hair. The amount of melanin in the iris, the colored part of the eye, determines what eye color a person will have. Genetics determines how much melanin or pigment a person will have in their body.
The DNA your baby receives from you and your partner determines whether the eyes are brown, blue, green, or other colors. A baby can be born with blue eyes (because the eyes sometimes do not produce much or no melanin at all while the baby is in the womb), but after birth – light stimulates the production of melanin, due to which the color of the eyes can change over time.
It is important to understand that it is not the color of the pigment that causes change. There is no blue, gray, green, or brown pigment in the eye, experts say, adding that the only pigment we have in our eyes is brown, and the amount of that pigment determines whether one’s eyes will be lighter or darker. Regardless of the science, it seems like a simple equation. One parent with brown eyes plus the other parent with brown eyes equals one baby with brown eyes, right? Not necessarily.
There are multiple genes in our body that contribute to eye color. Even if both parents have brown eyes, it is possible for the baby to end up with blue eyes, if the parents have blue eye genes somewhere in the genetic constitution, or if they have a mutated gene that can be passed down through the generations as recessive. No one can know what eye color a child will have when he grows up. How can a parent with one eye color have genes for another eye color? Through his grandparents, of course.
A baby’s eye color depends, not only on the eye color of mom and dad, but also on the eye color of their grandparents. Therefore, if you and your partner both have brown eyes and your baby has green, grandma or grandpa could be the reason. Even if you’ve checked tables or calculators about your unborn baby’s eye color, don’t think all predictions are fixed.
No one, including a doctor, can predict what eye color your child will have when he grows up. And whatever your baby eats, does, or how little or much is exposed to light, also, means nothing. It’s all a matter of genetics, nothing more. But, it should be remembered that if the baby is born with brown eyes, it means that he already has the amount of melanin determined by the genetic code, that is, the child’s eye color will not change anymore.
Experts claim that you will most likely notice the biggest change from the sixth to the ninth month of life. Over the course of a few weeks or months, you may notice that your baby’s eye color becomes darker. The change is so gradual that you may not even notice it until one day your child wakes up and surprises you with different eye color.
By 12 months, most babies have their permanent eye color, although experts say that in some children, eye color can change until the age of six. However, such cases are rare and change does not occur overnight. In any case, the baby’s eye color will change without any effect on vision or any other eye problems. But if the color of your eyes changes in just one eye, or if you notice that your baby’s eyes are blurred, be sure to visit a pediatrician or pediatric ophthalmologist.
