A 14-pound baby in Utah has set the 2013 birth weight record.
As previously reported by The Inquisitr , in 2012 a 14-pound baby was quite a trial because the mother, Kendall Stewardson, gave birth completely naturally .
Can I get a resounding “ouch”? Fortunately for new mother Sara Brandon, she gave birth to her 14-pound baby named Joel Brandon Jr. by cesarean section. She was kind of surprised how big he was since her previous birth was twin girls, and they only weighed eight pounds when put together:
“When they stuck him on the scale he was 14 pounds even. The doctor said it was the biggest baby he had ever delivered. I had to have two [obstetricians] deliver him instead of one, because they knew he was going to be big. They struggled to get him out.”
Dr. Robert Barbieri, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, believes this 14-pound baby has type 1 diabetes:
“An interesting effect of insulin, if it’s not taken in a sufficient amount, the glucose remains high, and the baby’s glucose starts to rise. It’s like giving the baby fertilizer and it grows very large.”
About 0.1 percent of babies weigh over 11 pounds, but 14-pound babies are considered very rare because doctors typically induce labor before the child can ever grow that large.
But it turns out Joel Brandon Jr. isn’t that large even as a 14-pound baby. The Guinness World Record for birth weight is held by Ann Bates, who gave birth to a baby weighing 23 pounds and 12 ounces in 1879. Again, can I get an “ouch” from my readers?
