12. Offered a paternity test but it was declined
Irrelevant story! My husband is half Mexican. When our son was born, he took one look at him and said, “He doesn’t look very Mexican.” Cue awkward looks from the nurses. He was not actually upset though, just joking. My husband looks pretty white himself. I actually offered to get a paternity test done, since he and I were FWBs when I found out I was pregnant, and both sleeping with other people. I was 99.9% sure due to timing and other factors, and my son does look a lot like him – once you get past the fact he’s got blond hair and blue eyes and should probably be named Whitey McWhiterson. My husband declined to get the test done; he believes our son is his, but I’d always be open to getting the test if he ever decides he wants to be 100% sure. At this point, it seems moot. We’re happily married and he’s Dada, so.
13. Pigmentation strikes again!
I’ve only see this happen once, and it was while I was in school during a rotation on the Labor and Delivery floor. The mother and father were both dark skinned, the baby came out, very light, and pink — as babies do. I remember the attending physician and nurse trying to speak quietly with the father who had stormed out of the room and explain that dark skinned babies gain pigmentation after birth, but he wasn’t trying to hear any of it.
I don’t know how the situation ended, but the baby was cute as a button.
14. The joys of racism
My aunt had a white boyfriend that my grandparents knew of. She brought him around a lot but they never spoke too much with him. When she got pregnant, my grandfather kicked her out (she was 18-19) and told her to go live with him. The day she gave birth, my grandparents and my mom (her sister) all went up to the hospital to see her new baby and he was black. That’s when she told everyone that the white “boyfriend” of hers was actually just a guy she paid to come pick her up when she was secretly seeing a black man. They met him for the first time that day but he ran away a few weeks later.
