My child will look like mummy or daddy?

Having a child is all excitement and full of surprises, wait what surprises?

Yes, surprises as you will always want to know who the baby will resemble, will be mum or dad? Or neither?

But, most things parents start to panic about are:

• Will my baby be healthy?
• What eye colour?
• What name shall I mention him/her?
• Will I buy a crib, worth EUR1K so my baby can feel like royalty or just buy a comfy crib?

So, on so forth as there’s much more, but I guess you want to know what your baby will look like right? Here goes:

We all know how babies are made, hope so 😊Sperm meets egg and voila you’ve got an embryo (Obviously there’s more to it, but I am jumping ahead) When the embryo starts developing a lot of genes are passed from either the mother or the father such as height, eye colour, but yet genetics is one of the biggest lotteries, which is full of surprises that can cause brunette parents to question their blonde child. Some newborns may resemble one parent or the other, they might also look like neither of them – We will question the postman later 😉

Researchers call this gene ‘RESHUFFLING’, which in my opinion is very complicated to explain, but ill break it down dummy style 😀 Mother and father will have, 46 chromosomes, of which 23 will get randomly sorted into your individual egg and sperm cells. When sperm and egg join, they each bring their unique mix of 23 chromosomes, creating a single cell with the necessary 46. This cell divides over and over again, eventually forming a fetus. Every time a couple conceives another kid, the same process occurs, but the chromosomes get shuffled in a different way, a process scientists refer to as recombination. (Quoted from Fatherly)

Therefore these mix of genes present on chromosomes will for example determine:

• Hair Colour
• Singing voice
• Body shape
• Eye colour
• Body structure
• Facial appearance

So you might be thinking what hair colour will my baby have?

This will all determine if the gene is strong or dominant to determine the hair colour of your newborn. As researched I found out that there is two melanin pigment in hair that will determine on which gene will be stronger. So in general if you have darker hair, there may be a gene of blond or dark that you carry. Therefore if your partner has the same, which will be two dark-haired people may result in either a blond or red-haired baby. Complicated, right? But that’s the beauty of life.

My daughter inherited my amazing and rare eye colour – BROWN (I know its irresistible) Now my wife has an ocean blue eye colour (Just sugar-coating her 😛 ) So how did my daughter end up with a brown seaweed colour rather than the ocean blue, genetics, so what will be the next eye colour of my child? So, lets lay down the fundamentals, my in-laws and her side of the family have mostly blue eyes so it was only natural that there will be a bigger chance that their children will have blue eyes. Having said this being that my family gene pool is mostly brown eyes, we have this idealogy that brown eyes are dominant and blue eyes are recessive, so the children will have all brown eyes, is that true? Let me quote this example from Healthline.com “For example, if you have brown eyes and mostly everyone in your family has brown eyes, that points to a strong or dominant version of a brown eye colour gene or set of genes. Suppose the other parent has blue eyes and his or her extended family does, too. Your baby will likely have brown eyes because that colour is usually dominant.

The blue eye genes will not be lost, though. They can manifest down the road in your grandchildren, should a certain mix of genes from parents occur.

In the same way, if both you and your partner have brown eyes but have had blue-eyed ancestors (check the family album!), your baby might have blue eyes because each of you has some blue eye genes that you carry in your DNA.” So I would suggest as your grandma to start looking at your past relatives and check for any blue-eyed ancestors (In my case)

So will my next child resemble me again or this time my wife? Who knows, I will find out in a years time 😀 Did you know why nature shows us that a baby will resemble the father mostly, researchers suggest that the idea is that human evolution favoured that children resemble their fathers at birth as a natural way for Dad to be certain that the child was his, sorry postman! But when they get older a baby can look like either parent, but we can safely say that they will have a mixture of both, also any family traits from your past relatives. Some research suggests that some traits skip generations and you might have your daughter resembling mostly your grandmother rather than your wife, lol!

Anyway, if your baby looks like you o your wife or like your next-door neighbour, you should love him/her unconditionally. The miracle of having a newborn in your hands for the first time is the best experience a parent can ask for. So, to answer my question, who will my next child resemble? It’s a guess until the big day arrives and see either my daughter or son with those breathtaking cheekbones that daddy has!