wishing your baby looked like you... - Page 2

[1stTimeMama4-4-10]

I can totally relate! My DD actually has my coloring - I am very fair with blue eyes, and as a child I had platinum blonde hair, though it is darker now; DH has very dark features with dark brown eyes and black hair.  DD has strawberry blonde hair and bright blue eyes. So she actually does look a lot like me. Yet MIL constantly talks about how she looks exactly like DH (sure some of her facial features, but she really doesn't look that much like him) and over Christmas, she brought a photo of herself and said that DD was clearly a "MIL's Maiden Name." It really bothered me because it seemed like not only did MIL try super hard to see a resemblance that isn't really there, she seemed to not want to acknowledge that DD looks like me and/or my family at all!

[Squrrl]

Huh.  My daughter, at 3 1/2, looks just absurdly like my husband--enough to draw surprised comment from strangers--and I admit, it never occurred to me to be anything but delighted.  Of course, I haven't got the insensitive in-laws to deal with, which may be the real issue.  Probably it's because I'm not exactly a baby connoisseur, but I think that babies more or less look like, well, babies, and was never at all interested in the "looks like" game.  So I totally agree that people see what they're inclined to see.  I didn't see anything but baby until my daughter was maybe one and was clearly developing her father's distinctive golden coloring.

Not that it wouldn't be nice to have older children who actually appear to be related to me, of course, but babies?  Eh.

Now I'm in a funny sort of position, though, relatedly--Evelyn so very clearly takes after her father, and I think it'd be kind of nice if this next baby maybe looked at least a smidge like me, but this one's going to be a boy, and from the beginning I've wanted to have a son with my husband just so that I could have a son as incredibly beautiful as my husband was as a boy! If I had to pick a child to take after my big, fierce-eyed, rawboned Viking of a husband, it would not have been the daughter, though so far the effect seems excellent!

Mostly, I think it sounds like a raw deal for all of you with families who make this an issue by being obnoxious about it.  I'm really sorry--once again, I count my in-law blessings.

[peacelove&camping]

Originally Posted by philomom 

Originally Posted by MamitaM 

My friend is telling me that most babies when they are born look like their father and later on look like their mothers. She says it's b/c way back in the caveman days it helped the fathers know for sure they were the fathers.

Yep, we discussed this in my college anthropology classes. They look like dad so a new mom can say to her hunter... "he's yours, bring more meat!". The more meat mama got, the better her milk was and the better her health was for producing more children. Nature has all kinds of sly tricks like this.

Edited to add.... we all are cousins anyway, you know. The human race got whittled down to just 15,000 souls at one point. That's not so many.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck

totally true! i grew up being told i looked exactly like my dad [which i did] my entire life, and i wanted so much to look like my mom. then suddenly, when i was 23 years old, you could see her in my face. it was crazy, but i guess it took that time for my features to mature enough or something.

also, dd came out looking like a pretty dh :) not like me at all. around 3 months, we noticed that what she really looked like was a combo of dh and my mom :) she still does now, and still no me, but she's only 11 months.

also, one of my brothers favors my dad's dad more than anybody, he doesn't show either parent really at all. it's funny the way genes work out :) so maybe it'll take some time, but you'll shine through in there hopefully!

[Super~Single~Mama]

Yeah, my ds looked like his dad's clone for the first few months, but now he looks just like my family.  His baby pictures and my cousins baby pictures are nearly identical.  His eye's are shaped like mine (although his color is my dad's), his hair is going to be my color (his dad is fire engine red - I'm blond/brown), his nose looks like his dad, but he got my dimples and mouth and his teeth look like mine.  LOL. 

I also wanted to say to the OP - as your child gets older you will see who they look like, but you'll also see how they just look like themselves too.  As his personality comes out, you'll see how his looks fit him, and start to see him - not just who he resembles.  Other people will start to see that too, and  will start to talk about what he does (cute things he says - right now my ds talks about making pickles on the stove - umm....really have no clue where that came from!), and less about his looks.  When babies are so new its hard to talk about personality and their interests b/c, well, no one knows what they like yet!

[beebalmmama]

I never minded either when my first ds looked just like his daddy. Although I often realized what a pair ds and I made when we went out, he looked nothing like me! Although as he moved into toddler hood his complexion started to lighten and people then started to say he looked like me.

My ds 2 looks a lot like me and has from almost day one. much more fair than his brother as an infant (although both are fair now, ds1 with brown hair and ds2 with blond). It is kind of nice to have two children that has taken after one of.

Originally Posted by Squrrl 

Huh.  My daughter, at 3 1/2, looks just absurdly like my husband--enough to draw surprised comment from strangers--and I admit, it never occurred to me to be anything but delighted.  Of course, I haven't got the insensitive in-laws to deal with, which may be the real issue.  Probably it's because I'm not exactly a baby connoisseur, but I think that babies more or less look like, well, babies, and was never at all interested in the "looks like" game.  So I totally agree that people see what they're inclined to see.  I didn't see anything but baby until my daughter was maybe one and was clearly developing her father's distinctive golden coloring.

Not that it wouldn't be nice to have older children who actually appear to be related to me, of course, but babies?  Eh.

Now I'm in a funny sort of position, though, relatedly--Evelyn so very clearly takes after her father, and I think it'd be kind of nice if this next baby maybe looked at least a smidge like me, but this one's going to be a boy, and from the beginning I've wanted to have a son with my husband just so that I could have a son as incredibly beautiful as my husband was as a boy! If I had to pick a child to take after my big, fierce-eyed, rawboned Viking of a husband, it would not have been the daughter, though so far the effect seems excellent!

Mostly, I think it sounds like a raw deal for all of you with families who make this an issue by being obnoxious about it.  I'm really sorry--once again, I count my in-law blessings.

[Laurski]

I admit, as much as I love my husband and think he's just the swellest lookin' guy I've ever seen, I really hoped DD would look like me.  However, I think that has more to do with me being adopted and not looking like *anyone* I know.  My sister (my parents' bio-kid) looks just like my dad, so it was sometimes tough as a kid to hear how much she looked like my dad, when I couldn't be included in the look-alike game.

As it turns out, when DD was first born she didn't look like either of us--she looked like a very a very small, red, angry leprechaun.    Now, at 5.5 months, a lot of folks say she looks like DH.  She definitely has some of his features (head shape, for one), but we also see some of my features in her as well, which frankly delights me to no end.  For the most part, though, when people ask us who she looks like, we just say "herself."

[zenmumajen]

Aww...I love that you say she looks like herself! I'm going to say that now when people ask who he looks like!

[hhmomma72]

Grace looked a lot like me when she was born and is becoming much more of a blend two months later.  Since I'm korean adopted by white parents any physical resemblance is pretty mindblowing to me.  My mom said that a few times people would say that I look like her, I guess to be nice, which she thought was just ridiculous.  Not looking like her didn't make me any less her child.  

[Terrilein]

Originally Posted by hhmomma72 

Grace looked a lot like me when she was born and is becoming much more of a blend two months later.  Since I'm korean adopted by white parents any physical resemblance is pretty mindblowing to me.  My mom said that a few times people would say that I look like her, I guess to be nice, which she thought was just ridiculous.  Not looking like her didn't make me any less her child.  

I had this with my ex-husband, who is NOT dd's father. Some people thought they were just making polite conversation. How embarassing! And it just frustrates me that people STILL want to say that she looks more like someone she's not even related to than her own mother. Sheesh!

FWIW, at almost 10 years it's still not clear who she really takes after. She has very few characteristcs that can be positively attributed to either parent. I'm thinking she's going to be taking after a grandparent, and we just won't know it until she's older. And when I really stop to think about it, that's exactly how it turned out with my brother. He never looked like either parent either. It was only after he started to college, and we happened to see a picture of his grandfather while visiting our grandparents. They could have been twins. As for me,  I always looked like my father: tall, lanky, dark hair. But I obviously had my mother's blue eyes and hair. It wasn't until I was an adult that the rest of my mother's facial features really popped out. And being prone to graying early. *sigh*

[AtYourCervices]

I look exactly like my mother. The only way you can tell our pictures apart (when she's the same age as I am) is the quality of the photograph. It doesn't really bother me, but I wish I had at least one physical characteristic from my dad's side so I could "prove" paternity there. Eventually we're going to have a paternity test done, though.

When I was pregnant with my youngest, her father (my now husband) was hoping I had cheated on him and the baby wasn't his. Blah, blah, blah, he didn't want to be a dad... whatever (he's glad he's a dad now). We had only been dating a couple months before I got pregnant. I hadn't cheated, and I knew the baby was his. I don't blame him for being suspicious, though, because we really shouldn't have conceived all things considered. Anyways, I hoped and prayed that our daughter would look like him just so he'd be able to bond with our daughter right away, and he would no longer continue to question paternity. Little did I know...

When our daughter was born she looked EXACTLY like her father. Every single feature came from him. In fact, she looked so much like her father that when our daughter was born, the doctor and nurses took one look at the baby and sloooowwwwly simultaneously turned their heads towards her father. "Sir, I believe you ARE the father!" Everybody cracked up laughing. They didn't even know that he was questioning paternity. 

I was so proud that our daughter looked like him, because it was like a badge proclaiming "I didn't cheat!!". I don't know how else to explain it. Yeah, I know just because it is his daughter, that doesn't prove I didn't have sexual relations with another man, but there's some logic in there somewhere. Our daughter is now 4 years old, and still looks EXACTLY like him. Nobody ever tells me that she looks like me. I have red hair and hazel eyes. DD has blonde hair and blue eyes. I have a round chin. DD has a cleft in her chin. DD has a widow's peak while I have none. The shape of DD's eyes, cheeks, ears and mouth are all exactly like her father's (very distinct). The nose is still to be decided, since she still has the little nursling nose. These are traits that could be picked out at birth that obviously came from her father and not from me. It was not just seeing what we wanted to see.

We ended up having a paternity test done (for child support with the courts), which proved that our daughter was his. It wasn't a surprise, though.

What's interesting, though, is our daughter has the same blood type as him. What's REALLY interesting is on the paternity test, of course our daughter has one allele from me and one from her father, however, due to my husband and I having some alleles in common (we're both Irish, not inbred) on the paternity test it showed my husband had more allele's in common with our daughter than I did. So, we joke  that his genes totally pwned mine. 

Has anybody else here had a paternity/maternity test done when the child obviously favored one parent, physically? Did you notice the identical parent having more allelle's in common with the child if the parents shared allele's? 

When both parents have different blood types, have you noticed the blood type being the same as the parent the child looks like? 

I just thought it was an odd little coincidence, and I'm wondering if others have seen the same. 

[mom2happy]

I have 3 kids and they are 8,6, and 9 months. They all look exactly like Dad, nothing like me. I have been hearing for 8 years that none of them looks like me.

It's just the truth. Before I even give people the chance to inform me that I carried 3 kids for 9 months just for my DH, I tell them - "Yes, I know, they look nothing like me."

It's funny, cuz then they always say something like "Oh, well I can see a resemblance around the eyes". 

My brother was born with cerebral palsy. It was a home birth and I was 7 at the time. My mother handled it very well, but I was always devestated about it.

When I look at my children, all I see is a miracle. I could care less who they look like.

I'm not saying I don't understand where you are coming from, just giving it from the perspective of someone who has 3 kids that don't even look related to their mom.

I was sure this last one would look like "my child", but nope- she doesnt. Good thing DH is cute!

[Monkeybean415]

I know how you feel! DD looks just like her daddy! I don't really see myself in her at all yet... hopefully I'll start coming out in her when she gets a little older! :)

[goinggreengirl]

I think people just say this without really looking. DS is the perfect blend of us but SO many people say he looks like DH and others that say he looks just like me. In fact, he looks a lot like pictures of me at the age and a lot like pictures of DH at that age... and DH and I don't look anything alike- he's Filippino and I'm super pale.

It's like pregnancy, people just have to say something, even if it's ridiculous!