A few months ago, I posted about a tool that analyzes your child’s facial features to determine which parent he or she more resembles. (If you haven’t seen it, check it out here.)
Equally fun – and possibly more so – is predicting what your baby could look like before birth. When I was pregnant, I spent hours and hours trying to predict my future baby’s eye color, hair color, height, facial features, you name it. There are a lot of cool sites out there where you can enter you and your partner’s features and they will predict what your baby may look like. Below are some of my favorites sites and tips on predicting what your baby may look like:
- Eye Color Predictor - What is the likelihood that your baby’s eyes would be brown? Blue? Green? All you need to know is your eye color, your partner’s eye color, and the grandparents’ eye colors – the site does the rest. It displays both genotype (genetic makeup) and phenotype (actual eye color) for all potential offspring.
- Height Estimator - Height is more variable than eye color, and thus, harder to predict prior to birth. However, the following rule should give you an idea of how tall your child may be: Take an average of the mother and father’s heights. Then, subtract 2 inches for a girl and add 2 inches for a boy to get your child’s (predicted) adult height.
- Hair Color - Probably the hardest trait to predict is hair color because there are believed to be multiple genes that influence it. Parents can produce children with a wide range of hair colors, regardless of their own. However, since dark hair is generally dominant to light, two parents with dark hair are much more likely to produce a blond baby than two parents with blond hair are to produce a dark haired baby. For more information on why this is, please read about dominant and recessive genes here.
- Dominant and Recessive Traits - Which traits are dominant? Which are recessive? Knowing this will allow you to make an educated guess at you and your partner’s genetic makeup and better predict what your baby may look like.
(Once that little bundle arrives? You’re going to need a night out. Head over here to find a babysitter!)
Lately I’ve sort of been obsessing about Noah’s predicted height. Isn’t there an old wives tale that you can double the height at age 2? He’s only 16 months and he’s already 33 inches. At least he’s not a Ginger Kid. Can I say that on here?
the ginger kids are awesome but i don’t know what is the genetic inheritance of orange hair
He’s also going to be an insensitive kid with a mother like you, no matter how tall he turns out to be!
I think all the infant babies resemble each other very much.
nice post thanks
[...] while back – 2 years ago, to be exact – I wrote a post entitled “Predict What Your Baby Will Look Like.” Revisiting that post got me thinking. For all you parents out there who used prediction [...]
[...] recessive genes combine to form a phenotype (i.e. the trait that displays) positively fascinating. I write about predicting babies’ features a lot on this blog because: 1) I think it’s so damn interesting and 2) You can actually predict what your future [...]
I’m just confused off I have strawberry blonde hair n my spouse has black hair I’m confused on what color our son may have