Most of that scattered light that gets back out is blue light, giving blue eyes their color. As light enters the eye, most of the light is absorbed in the back layer, while particles in the spongy middle layer (stroma) scatter the remaining light reflecting back out of the eye. The iris has three layers, and people with brown eyes have melanin in all three.Ī blue-eyed person has brown pigment in the back layer only. These are the brown eyes that greet so many smiling parents. A lot more melanin means brown eyes.īut for many babies in the womb - including, specifically, many babies of non-Caucasian descent, though this can be true for any ethnicity - melanocytes don’t need the light of day to pump melanin into those developing irises. If a little more melanin makes its way into the iris, their eyes will look green or hazel. If your child’s melanocytes don’t secrete much more melanin in the months and years ahead, then their eyes will stay blue. (Though remember, ethnicity also comes into play - so some babies will produce more melanin than others. Melanocytes respond to light, and since your newborn has spent the last several months in total darkness, there wasn’t much light to trigger melanin production in the irises. Blue eyes mean there is little melanin in the iris.

What gives an iris its color is a natural pigment called melanin, a protein secreted by special cells called melanocytes. If your baby had jaundice at birth - don’t worry, this isn’t uncommon - the sclera may have been a little yellowish. The white part of the eye is called the sclera. The term “eye color” refers to the color of the iris, the ring around the pupil, which is black.

Baby baby blue eyes