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Originally posted by deltaphi94
The rH factor = whether your blood type is positive or negative. I have a negative blood type, and it is common practice for women w/ a negative rH factor to be injected with rhogam both while they are pregnant and after the baby is born... at least that's what the obgyn who delivered my son said.
I may have misunderstood, but from what I recall, it had something to do with the possibility of my body rejecting the baby if his rH factor was positive (which it is).
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This part is more or less correct. If an rH negative mother has an rH positive child, and there is mixing of the blood (very likely during pregnancy), then the mother will build up antibodies against the positive rH factor. The next time the mother's body comes into contact with the positive rH factor (i.e., her next pregnancy with an rH positive fetus), her immune system would attack it as it would any other foreign body.
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An example would be that if the mother has O- blood and the father has A+, the baby has O+. In my case, my mother is O+, father is AB-, and I am O-. Basically, the baby takes the letter type from the mother, and the rH factor from the father.
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This part...not so much. If I'm remembering correctly from my genetics class, if your mother was O and your father was AB, then you should either be A or B. Your chances for each genotype look like this:
A B
O AO BO
O AO BO
So a cross between an AB and an O has a 50% chance of being A and a 50% chance of being B because A and B are dominant to O.
ETA: As for the rH factor, that is based on both the mother's and the father's genetics, as is the blood type. It is not inherited strictly from the father.