For months doctors had warned a Southern California woman that she would be having a big baby. But no one expected him to be this big, when the healthy boy weighed in at 13 pounds, 14 ounces after being delivered by cesarean section, the North County (Calif.).
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"How'd he fit?" was the immediate reaction of his mother, Cynthia Sigler of Vista, Calif., after the delivery on Thursday. While doctors estimated two months ago that Jayden Sigler would weigh about 9 pounds, they increased his size to 11 by early March, his mother told.
Jayden's birth weight almost doubles that of his sister, Jailyn. The now 2½-year-old was 7 pounds, 2 ounces at birth. Mostly full-term babies weigh between 5 pounds, 8 ounces, and 8 pounds, 13 ounces.
Dr. Jerald White, the attending physician who helped deliver Jayden Sigler at Tri-City Medical Center, said he was the biggest newborn he had ever seen in the over 20,000 babies he has helped deliver. "It wasn't so difficult that it created a problem for anybody," the doctor said about delivering a very big newborn by cesarean section, which can be more difficult.
But it did make sense why the end of Sigler's pregnancy was so challenging. "When I saw how big he is, I understood why I was in so much pain," she told. But Sigler's son doesn't come close to the biggest newborns of all time.
According to the Guinness World Records, the heaviest baby weighed 23.75 pounds. Born in 1879, he died 11 hours after birth. Guinness also notes a 22.5-pound baby born in Italy in 1955. More recently, a 19 pound, 2 ounce baby boy was born in Indonesia in the fall of 2009.
Even though Jayden didn't come close to those numbers, Sigler said she has had to make some adjustments to accommodate such a big baby. "My sister took back the newborn and zero to 2 months clothes yesterday," the new mom said.
