What Will My Baby Look Like?

Growing up the oldest of seven kids, one thing that I had the ability of experiencing first hand was the variety of gene combinations that can occur between two people. Both of my parents are Korean, but they have very different features. Only my immediate family lives in the United States so it was an even more eye opening experience when I returned to Korea for the first time at the age of 17 to see the genetic variations among my mother's family (who herself was one of eight).

I am no doubt the female version of my father. If I had to make a continuum of where each of my siblings land on a scale from Dad to Mom, it might be something like this (though I'm sure one or two of my sibs might disagree):

My youngest brother (#6) has Down Syndrome, and his features are quite distinctive for either side, so I've put him in the middle. It's amazing to me how genes work. Just because you have one kind of baby, it doesn't mean they'll all come through with the same combination. This is why CGB and I are just so incredibly curious and excited to meet our little one. I've seen the range of variety you can get with two Koreans, so what happens when you pool together genes from a Korean and a Half English/Half American with German descent? Here's a photo of us at around 1 year of age, the mind boggles at the possibilities:

Hapa children are pretty commonplace here in San Francisco, but that doesn't make it any less interesting to see all the combinations. When CGB and I were first dating, it certainly wasn't out of the ordinary, but at times it did feel noticeably different being part of a mixed race couple. Today, I'd say about 65% of my personal network consists of multicultural relationships - MARRIED multicultural relationships at that! Turkish, Italian, Mexican, Indian, Panamanian, and I don't mean Americans with descent. Many of my friends are second generation like me and grew up bilingual. In addition, both of my sisters #2 and #4 are also in committed relationships with non-Korean men. Honestly, the only thing that comes close to the excitement level of meeting our little one is how much I am looking forward to seeing him/her grow up with multi-ethnic friends.