What are my odds of having a blue/hazel eyed baby?

[Killer Angel]

Originally Posted by Juggling Goth

I may regret asking, but what happened to the woman from the names thread five months ago? Or the lesbian couple from July 2011? To me this suggests you might want to wait longer than two months.

I could also add that Pika's got some talent, in finding peoples apparently OK, that later reveal to have odd behavior.
Do you remember the issue about the roomates and the pair of Husky-Mix strays?

[Diva De]

Pika,

If this is what you go ahead with, then the best of luck. Time is the only thing that can tell you what color the child's eyes will be. And they often change color from birth as they age.

That being said, here's some real talk.

Spoiler

Be careful. A child's life is nothing to gamble on. Don't let desperation (or - as you might see it - "fulfilling a lifelong dream") push you into a reckless decision. I KNOW the concept is exciting, and finding someone who seems to want the same thing as you can be exhilirating, but 2 months is simply NOT enough time to know someone and make this kind of decision. As a mother of 2, with the first "marriage" I had, no one here knows better than me the kind of impact a hasty decision can have on a child. My boys...we went through some stuff. And I'll leave it at that.

Please PLEASE take some more time before jumping into this. At this point, you only know what this young lady has told you. You likely don't know her family, medical/mental health status, long-term personality. How can you have any idea what she would be like raising a child? Does she have custody of her other child? How old is her other child? Sometimes it can takes YEARS for abusive behavior or mental health issues to become apparent. Have you been to a doctor together to do a pre-screen and make sure there are no illnesses or conditions to worry about?

I am very concerned because of, particularly, a line in your signature. "I just want someone to hold me and tell me they love me. Especially when I am sad." Maybe you need a dog. Or a professional you can talk to. If there are issues with your life, emotionally or otherwise, having a child WILL NOT FIX THEM. It will just complicate things for your future offspring.

tl;dr - Be careful. You NEED to take more time before you do this.

~De (aka crotchety old lady who rained on your parade)

[Jade Dragon]

50-50.

You either have a blue/hazel-eyed baby, or you don't.

[Wardog]

Originally Posted by Destro_Yersul

EDIT, because you are all ninja: Fair-skin is based on the same principles, but isn't a dominant or recessive trait so much. I believe children usually wind up with skin somewhere between the colour of both parents. Sort of like what happens if you mix two colours of paint together. Light + Dark = Mid tone.

Usually.

But because it is the effects of the genes that blend, while the genes themselves remain discrete, you sometimes get funny things happening, like black parent + white parent => different coloured twins.

[Mc. Lovin']

I just want to say I love that, after having around a year break from these forums, I come back immediately to a classic thread from you about your obsession with having kids.

I hope this works out for you man

[Kallisti]

Originally Posted by Morph Bark

From what a friend majoring in Biology told me yesterday, stuff such as eye colour can be weird. There are just so many genes that help decide it. Hence why I am the only green-eyed person in the family, for example.

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

And everything just became a whole lot more complicated.

This, I'm afraid.

The advice earlier in the thread works if we assume that eye color is controlled by a single gene, with each person inheriting two alleles--under those conditions we can build our Punnett square and do some simple math.

As it's been pointed out, that's not, in fact, the case. Eye color isn't a simple Mendelian trait, which more or less invalidates the math.

In this case, though, that may well be good news--the study describes eye color as being the result of variation within three base pairs on the OCA2 gene (the eye-color gene formerly believed to operate on a simple Mendelian basis), with each possible combination of bases in the pairs creating a different eye color.

Which would mean that, since both blue and hazel are present in your or your co-parent's families and none of these traits is simply dominant or recessive, both blue and hazel are distinct possibilities; the study implies that you do not in fact need two copies of any allele to have any given eye color, so even if you have only the brown-eye block to pass on it won't automatically mean your son or daughter will have brown eyes. If you've got the block for blue or green/hazel as well--possible, since your aunt has (lovely) green eyes--and your co-parent has only the blue-eye block (ask about her parents and grandparents), you could have a fifty or seventy-five percent chance of blue or hazel, barring weirdness (to which eye color is prone).

Here is the actual study the Science Daily article is referencing, in case you're up for some pretty dry, technical reading. It'll give you a more accurate picture of the science--the article linked earlier is pretty massively oversimplified--but it's pretty dense.


Also, adding my voice to the chorus; you seem remarkably gung-ho about making a lifetime commitment to a woman you've known for two months. Even if you have pre-settled any custody arguments, I'd question whether it's fair to your future son or daughter to run such a large risk of eventually having to raise them with split parents. I know that plenty of kids grow up just fine with their parents separate, and I don't doubt that you'll both love your child very much, but it's something to consider for, perhaps, a bit longer than two months.

Whatever you decide in the end, best wishes. The Playground has your back.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: Locked for review.