Whoa, baby!
The Cessna family, from Armstrong County, Penn., is celebrating the birth of Addyson Gale Cessna, who arrived at 13 pounds, 12 ounces and more than two feet tall.
Though the delivering hospital, Armstrong County Memorial, doesn't maintain birthweight records, doctors told KDKA Addyson is the largest they've ever delivered.
“I think as mothers, we all have that initial, oh my that must have hurt, and they’re right. That’s big.” Dr. Yannie Narcisse, one of the delivering doctors, told KDSK. The station reports that Addyson, herself, was delivered via c-section.
In March of this year, George King, a British baby, became the U.K.'s second largest infant to have ever been delivered vaginally. He weighed 15 pounds, 7 ounces.
Despite Addyson and George's sizes, however, these babies don't come close to the record, set by a boy born to Anna Bates, a Canadian, in 1879. Baby Bates weighed 23 pounds, 12 ounces, and was more than 30 inches long.
While these big babies may be cute, just like their adult counterparts, notable weights often signal more serious health problems.
Mary Helen Black, a biostatistician with Kaiser Permanente Southern California's department of research and evaluation explained to HuffPost in an interview last year, "There may be a general perception that, 'Oh, the baby's big, but so what?' That's a misperception." She cautioned that babies who are born too large are at an increased risk "for very serious consequences both during delivery, for the mother and the infant, as well as later in life -- for the infant."
Known as "fetal macrosomia," when a baby is born weighing more than 8 pounds, 13 ounces, this condition can be attributed to maternal obesity and diabetes, among other factors.
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