Texas-sized newborn weighs in at over 16 pounds

[catlover79]

http://www.fox8.com/news/nationworld...,5632677.story

Karen Brooks

Reuters

6:29 p.m. EDT, July 11, 2011

AUSTIN (Reuters) - Texans love to brag about how everything is bigger in the Lone Star State. Now they have proof, with the birth of a baby boy who weighed a whopping 16 pounds and one ounce.

JaMichael Brown's weight was more than double the national average for a newborn and he measures 24 inches long, just a few inches shy of an average one-year-old.

JaMichael holds the title of the biggest baby ever born at Good Shepherd Medical Center in Longview, located on the border between Texas and Louisiana. The hospital has been open since 1938 and last year delivered nearly 2,900 babies.

The previous record there was set by a child born in 1988 who was just over 15 pounds, Victoria Ashworth, the hospital's marketing director, told Reuters on Tuesday.

JaMichael was born at 9:05 a.m. on Friday to Janet Johnson and Michael Brown. This is Johnson's fourth child, but the couple's first together, officials said.

Johnson delivered him by scheduled Caesarean section in her 39th week of pregnancy, just a few days early, hospital officials said.

The state is still trying to determine whether JaMichael breaks all records for Texas-sized newborns.

Johnson was released from the hospital on Tuesday but is staying there until JaMichael, who is under observation in the neonatal intensive care unit, gets to go home in the next few days.

"He's ... stabilized and is just being observed and watched carefully," Ashworth said.

The little bruiser, who has already earned the affectionate nickname "Moose" across the Internet, gets his size partially from the fact that his mother had gestational diabetes during her pregnancy, Ashworth said.

But it's also a matter of big Texans begetting other big Texans, she said. His father is 6 feet 6. His uncle? 6 feet 8.

"They do have some genetics that play in," Ashworth said.

No word on how many Texas universities have already contacted his dad to set up his football scholarship.

JaMichael may be making waves in the land of tall hats and taller tales, but he's not the biggest baby ever born.

News reports and record books tell of newborns more than 23 pounds in the late 1800s, and an Indonesian boy born at 19.1 pounds in 2009.

(Editing by Greg McCune)

Copyright © 2011, Reuters

[Brad Russ]

Holy cow!!! No pun intended. A kid I went to school with was a 14 pound newborn. I've never heard of a 16 pound baby though. I always wonder how painful it must be to give birth to a baby that size. Childbirth is a painful thing as is, the pain from having a 16 pound baby must be excrutiatingly painful.

[sunshinefizzy]

Damn!!! Really nothing left to say.

[MrCleveland]

I heard this at my sister's party, what is the biggest baby ever born actually? (My sister said something off-color..."The parents weren't Euro-Ameerican")!

[Family Ties Forever!]

Originally Posted by catlover79

Now they have proof, with the birth of a baby boy who weighed a whopping 16 pounds and one ounce. aMichael Brown's weight was more than double the national average for a newborn and he measures 24 inches long, just a few inches shy of an average one-year-old.

H's not the biggest baby ever born. ews reports and record books tell of newborns more than 23 pounds in the late 1800s, and an Indonesian boy born at 19.1 pounds in 2009.

Wow, 16 pounds. That's a big newborn. He's two feet long at 24 inches. I wonder why they covered his eyes?

As for the newborn that was 23 pounds, woah! Talk about painful.