You may remember that I posted a few months about working with 23andMe, a personal genetics company in Silicon Valley that’s making it possible for average Janes and Joes to get access to their genetic information. While I had a few misgivings about “knowing too much”, curiosity won out and I spat (i.e. filled a small vial with saliva to send to the company for genotyping, or analysis of my genetic information).
Finally, 23andMe is ready to announce the project they’ve hired a group of fabulous mom bloggers (including yours truly) to help launch: the Pregnancy Community. What I find the most exciting about the community is the opportunity to contribute to surveys and research studies about health, traits and pregnancy–and you don’t have to be a 23andMe customer to participate.
I’m a skeptic when it comes to technology and health (for example, I’ve never chosen to get genetic testing done on any of my children in utero) and it’s something I thought long and hard about before choosing to partner with 23andMe. But what I’m finding is that knowing more about yourself and your background isn’t scary or sinister in and of itself; it’s just more information that you can choose to use (or not use) however you’d like.
My first post is up over at 23andMe, and it’s all about “why I spat”:
As a mom of five, I’m always curious how it can possibly be that I wound up with such different children, all created from the same basic set of genetic material. There are some things I’d love my kids to inherit from me—-my blue eyes, for example. But I’d rather they got my husband’s skin (he tans much better). And while I hope they love to read like I do, he’s a whole lot better at following user’s manuals, while I can barely tell the difference between slot A and tab B, let alone figure out how to insert one into the other.
So far it seems like our 5 kids are an unpredictable blend of their father and myself. My 11-year-old son Jacob looks almost nothing like me—he has his dad’s hazel eyes, and dark hair—but there is that dimple in his chin that comes from yours truly. My 9-year-old son Isaac has my light hair, freckles and blue eyes, but my mother-in-law’s eyebrows exactly. My younger sons are blonde, but so far—less than three weeks in—my only daughter seems dark, like her dad.
Their personalities are all over the map, with bits and pieces of their father and me and other relatives making for an interesting family stew. How much of this is chance, and how much was pre-written in their genetic code? Did, for example, the fact that they all got teeth at 2.5 months of age have anything to do with the fact that I got mine around the same age? Are they jokesters because they were born that way, or is it from their environment? And hey, I know that sperm determine the baby’s gender, but is it really all because of Dad that we wound up with four boys before we finally broke the mold and got a girl—or is it possible my genes have anything to do with it?
Read the rest of my post here at the 23andMe pregnancy community. And you can help move the research forward by sharing anonymously about your pregnancy experience(s). Visit www.23andme.com/pregnancy to take surveys on everything from whether old wives’ tales held true to you, to which common pregnancy maladies you experienced. I hope to see you there!
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