Genetics - Part 1

The first time my younger son, now nine, made me think about this concept was soon after he was born. He was so young that the best way to describe his age was in hours, not days or weeks.

The nurses administered him a battery of tests, and one was for his blood type. My boy was identified as blood type B. The problem was that I was type O and my husband was type A. This adorable baby, that I was crazy about, didn’t match us.

(By InvictaHOG - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1088507)

“It must be a mistake,” I said. “Please redo the tests.”
It was heartbreaking to see him being pricked again in the heel, to squeeze another drop of blood. His little foot was so tiny! Poor baby! He cried in desperation, but it had to be done, right?

The second result came back identical to the first. I doubted that the lab had made a mistake again, so what could be the explanation?

The nurses and the doctor were continuing their routine like nothing unusual was going on. Maybe they thought it was not their business to suggest that perhaps I was an unfaithful spouse. My husband seemed indifferent, too. I was the only one who started to panic. What if they accidentally had swapped the babies?

“When they took him to the nursery, did you follow him all the way?” I asked my husband. “Did you look at him all the time? Was there any moment that he was not in your sight?”
“What?! Of course I did. I followed him everywhere.”
“Are you sure he is ours?”
“No doubt.”

The beautiful baby in my arms was so precious and cute that he made me cry from time to time. (Yeah, maybe my hormones were also a bit out of whack.) I didn’t want to give this baby back, even if he wasn't mine.

I wanted, in case of a mix-up, to go back home with two babies, the one I had started to nurse, to kiss, to hold, and the other one, whom I needed to find. My husband repeated several more times that he had followed him around everywhere, while I was recuperating. I had to give up and say to myself, "Genetics is bogus!"

The next day, the mystery was solved. We learned that my husband's blood type was AB, not A, as he had thought for many decades. I regained my faith in the fact that parents and children share many visible and invisible components of their bodies. The doctor added, “Of course he is yours. He has the darkest hair of all the babies in the whole hospital. I can tell you are his parents from the way he looks.”

Go here for Genetics - Part 2