Baby Boy Is 19 Pounds At Birth!

I ached until I read the word “caesarean” in a report about the mum who gave birth to a nineteen-pounder (8.6kg) in Indonesia today.

Nineteen pounds! That’s my cat and half another cat put together!

The baby boy was wrested from mama’s belly by surgeons, who reported his legs were especially tricky to remove because they were so big. A gynaecologist involved in the mum’s case noted she was nine months along (no surprise this baby was full term), but the immense size of the baby—the biggest ever in Indonesia—was likely due to gestational diabetes.

Studies have linked high birthweight to gestational diabetes, so this was no surprise. But just HOW big the little boy became is interesting because his three siblings were all much smaller—they were each delivered by a midwife rather than the surgical route.

Just to put this one in perspective — an old New York Times article shows a nineteen pound boy came into the world in 1913 on Long Island, well before the advent of all this nice comfy maternity ward business that today’s gestational diabetics can take advantage of. That baby’s parents weighed a total of 227kg together.