Incredible Breakthrough: Black Couple Welcomes a Baby with a Different Skin Tone The busy operating theater fell silent. The doctors and nu...
Incredible Breakthrough: Black Couple Welcomes a Baby with a Different Skin Tone
The busy operating theater fell silent. The doctors and nurses stared at each other, stunned.
And, as he stood beside his wife's bed and looked into his newborn's eyes for the first time, new father Francis Tshibangu's joy turned to disbelief.
“I was holding on to Arlette's hand when they lifted Daniel off her,” Francis says. "He was covered in blood... but then I saw that his skin was white and his hair was blonde. My jaw dropped."
In a twist of nature, Francis and Arlette, who have no white relatives, had given birth to a white baby.
The genetic mix has perplexed experts, who say Daniel is NOT an albino and that the parents, who already have a two-year-old black son named Seth, cannot explain how this is possible.
Francis adds: "My first thought was 'Wow, is this really mine?' I was too shocked to speak, and I could see the doctors looking at each other, thinking the baby couldn't be mine. They themselves must have been shocked. I'm sure they were thinking 'Oh my God... what's going on here and what will he do?'."
As the nurses admired Daniel's blonde hair, neither Arlette nor I said a word. We were just too shocked by his white skin. When I leaned down and kissed him, I got a better look at his features and saw that he looked like both me and Arlette. He has my nose and my wife's lips.
All we can say is that Daniel is our miracle and, although we are surprised by his white skin, we feel very lucky: he is beautiful."
Fertility experts describe the birth as "extraordinary" and can't explain why the couple has one white and one black child.
Arlette, proudly cradling her son, says: "The reaction in the operating room was shocked silence, even I was included. I stared at Daniel with wide eyes. The looks of the doctors and nurses said it all... everyone was wondering how I had never had a white baby. But when the nurse placed his little pink body in my arms, I instantly bonded with him. When I looked at him, all I felt was love. Like any newly giving birth mother, my main concern was that he was healthy, which he is."
For the couple, the birth of their second child was an extraordinary surprise. They don't know why these things happen, but they believe it's God's choice. Arlette adds, "What worries us most is that people will make fun of him and ask him a lot of questions. Children can be cruel, and we feel very protective of Daniel. When they are older and we take them out together, people will assume we are taking our son and his white friend out. We don't want them to ask him if he's adopted or feel uncomfortable calling him 'mom.' on the playground."
We call him our special child, he is our gift. God works in mysterious ways and I'm not sure why he chose us: we are normal people. But I'm glad he did, and we couldn't be more proud, of both of our special children."
Professor Robert Winston - 'Birth is truly extraordinary'
Professor Robert Winston, a leading fertility expert, calls the birth "extraordinary". “This is incredibly rare and one of the first cases I've heard of in the UK,” says Professor Winston. “The fact that it happened in the same family – albeit in different generations – is significant.”
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