Nineteen Pound Baby!
When most of us hear the news about the arrival of a new baby being born we automatically expect to hear the weight of the baby at birth and nowadays, most babies are born somewhere between five and nine pounds. What we do not expect to hear is that the tiny little bundle of joy weighed an astounding nineteen pounds!
This was the case for a mother from Jakarta in Indonesia. Forty one year old Ani Hasanuddin gave birth to her large baby boy who was born by cesarean section which was carried out as an emergency operation after complications arose during her pregnancy. Ani and her husband, fifty year old Muhammad Hasanuddin already have two children together and they too were on the larger scale, one of the children weighing over nine pounds and other over eleven pounds.
Akbar Risuddin, who was twenty four inches long was born healthy, hungry and was reported to be doing very well. At his birth weight he weighs the same as an average one year old and his father hopes that he will be able to afford milk for his baby's large appetite.
The gynecologist who delivered the baby was Doctor Binsar Sitanggang. He stated that the cesarean was carried out due to the baby's size and the safety of both him and the mother. He commented that the surgery was still complicated given the size of the baby but also that his size could have been caused by the mother contracting diabetes during her pregnancy, a common occurrence apparently for women who do have larger babies.
Akbar is a very loud baby, particularly when he is hungry and put next to an average size newborn looks like a giant.
Other Large Babies
There have been other babies born weighing staggering amounts including:
- In 1879 in Canada, Anna Bates had a baby boy who weighed over twenty three pounds at birth. The child was also thirty inches long but unfortunately he did not survive.
- In Italy in 1955 a twenty two pound baby boy was born to Carmelia-Fedele.
- Ademilton dos Santos, a seventeen pound baby was born to a Brazilian woman, Francisca Ramos dos Santos, in 2005. His size was also connected to the mother's diabetes.
On hearing these heavyweight numbers, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if many eyes begin to fill up, not from joy but from the sheer thought of having to give birth to a child of this size! Ouch!