Nearly Fourteen Pound Baby Born in Pittsburgh — Happy Mother’s Day!

The Pittsburgh Steelers may have a new player on the defensive line this year — a 13-pound, ten-ounce baby boy was born in the Steel town and is doing well, doctors say. Baby Isaac was born Thursday to Brad and Michelle Hall of Ellwood City, a town about 40 miles north of Pittsburgh, and was born by planned Cesarean Section about a week early, because doctors feared he was large — they just didn’t know how large, according to his mother, Michelle.

“We had the ultrasounds, and decided to have a planned cesarean section…I had a really big belly, so we knew he was going to be big, but not this big. It was really heavy.”

Usually, babies that weigh this much have health issues, or are born to a mother with uncontrolled gestational diabetes. That wasn’t the case with this baby — he and mom are perfectly healthy in every way. Usually, physicians question if babies who weigh more than eight pounds, 13 ounces are born to mothers with gestational diabetes, because that is the cutoff for “normal weight.” Isaac was approximately twice the size of most newborns, and his very first outfit was sized for a six-month-old. In fact, his father, Brad, said they would need to donate all their newborn clothes, as nothing they had prepared for Isaac fits him.

Isaac even broke a hospital record for being the biggest baby born there, according to Dr. Andrew Sword, who works at the hospital where he was delivered.

“When I polled all the pediatricians from this hospital, some of whom date from the early 1980s, there’s never been a baby on-record that’s this size.”

Usually, if the cause of the large baby is not gestational diabetes, it is maternal obesity or abnormally large parents, or a genetic line with people who are very large. But these parents are normal-sized. Being that the baby was actually born a week “early,” or before his due date, it’s completely plausible that he would have been over 14 pounds if left in utero another week, as babies can easily gain several ounces a day during their last days in the womb. It is possible — but could be dangerous — to deliver a baby this big vaginally. It’s very possible the baby’s shoulders could become stuck, a problem known as shoulder dystocia, which can cause lifelong problems. It is also likely to cause tearing and abnormal bleeding for the mother, not to mention prolonged labor, which can bring about a host of other problems.

Fortunately, little Isaac is completely healthy and so is his mother. It will be a very happy Mother’s Day for Michelle Hall.

[Photo credit to ABC]