Here in Sweden it's quite common for newborns to start out as blond and blue eyed only for it to change later. Hair color can take up to four years to darken. Eye color is usually stable within one year, perhaps two.<p>It is so common that the Swedish phrase for "naive" is "blue eyed".
Eyes are so strange. Ever looked at your own iris through a magnifying glass? Mine are strands of grey, yellow and grey-blue... in different lights and settings they can appear more grey, more green, or more blue. They're hard to pin down as a colour and as I've aged they seem darker and sometimes the colours stand out more. I've also found different emotional states seem to make the colours different, I'm assuming this is to do with pupil size and how the iris is relaxed/tense/etc. In my life I've often had "your eyes are blue today", "they're more green today", and of course I don't see my eyes and really have to imagine how they look in that moment, in the light, the environment, with certain clothes, certain emotional states.
I think I probably had blue eyes when born, I do have a painting my mother made and I had blue eyes. Sometime in my teens / 20s my eyes were some sort of multi color so I was always getting asked what color they were and I was replying brown, gray, hazel, green relatively randomly and getting accepted as yes, that's what they are.<p>In a party in SF in my 30s a girl started talking to me and saying I had eye surgery done to have my eyes the color they were and being upset with me when I said no, I looked in the mirror they were an incredibly striking blue (I had not taken anything that would alter my perceptions)<p>My eyes have been pretty much blue since then, although they often seem to vary in lightness dependent on how tired I am or similar factors.
> Such relatively common, healthy colour change is mostly confined to early childhood. In another study in the US, which tracked more than 1,300 twins from infancy to adulthood, eye colour usually stopped changing by the age of six, though in some cases (10-20% of those studied), it continued to change throughout adolescence and into adulthood.<p>This is reassuring. I remember my eye color not stabilizing until well into school age but when I recount this as an adult most people refuse to believe me, insisting that it can't change after the first year of age.<p>I was born blue eyed, then changed to blue-grey, grey-green and eventually mostly pure green.
Happens in other mammals also. In kitten is very common to start as light eyes and darken or get more saturated in the first year.<p>Blue eyes in adult cats came also with some genetic diseases included in the same pack. Angora cats with white fur and light blue eyes are often deaf. They were very popular in the past, but is seen now as an non desirable trait and excluded from breeding programs.
This matches my children's experience. I have blue eyes and my wife is Taiwanese. When our kids were newborn, their eyes were green. In some early photos, almost blue. They also had very light colored hair. By the time they were toddlers their eyes turned the brown color they are now, and their hair became dark brown.
My mother, mid 80's, had red-almond brown eyes most her life. After going through chemo treatment 4 years ago, her eyes became deep blue.<p>Likewise, my wife had green/grey/hazel eyes when we married, and now they are solid grey.
I thought it was generally known that a lot of babies are born with blue eyes which later change colour.<p>Personally I had really dark brown eyes until the age of about 12. Then they went very green, and now they are hazel.
My eyes used to change color frequently when I was a kid between green, yellow, and blue. Even nowadays they range between green and yellow depending on the day.
Some carnivores seem to have changing eye color after switching off the standard American diet. Dunno if it's the same for vegans or other diets.
I used to have grey/blue eyes and they're green now
Is it possible that the eye colour relates to health, eg toxicity? That there is a physical cause to eye colour changes, and that you eye colour provides an indication of what your body is dealing with?
My sister had blue eyes when young and they're more green now. My own eyes are a lighter brown than they were in childhood, with hazel rings on the edges of the irises.
My eyes have been shifting from brown to green for some time now. They started identical do my sisters dark brown by look completely different in our late 20'.