There are health reasons to want to keep the size of your baby within a normal range.
If you’re the one pushing out said baby, there are also practical reasons that are no laughing matter.
In some cases, a person might be unable to control how large or small their baby comes out, but if you’re concerned, there are some factors you might be able to control in order to reduce your risk.
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The average size of newborn baby girls is 7lbs 2oz, while boys weigh just a bit more, at an average of 7lbs 6oz.
The heaviest girl ever born was recorded at 15lbs in 2016, and the heaviest boy tipped the scales in 1955, weighing in at 22lbs 8oz.
Yikes.
The actual term for a “giant” baby is macrosomia, and those babies account for about 12% of births – 15%-45% of births when the mother has been diagnosed with gestational diabetes.
In addition to gestational diabetes, obese mothers, mothers who gain an excessive amount during pregnancy, older mothers, and mothers who have an increased amount of amniotic fluid will have a higher risk of also having a large baby.
If you’ve had one baby with macrosomia (any baby weighing over 8.8 pounds qualifies), you’re likely to have more, as birth weight in siblings tends to remain the same or increase slightly with each one.
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Of course, babies born past their due dates are also likely to be heavier.
Boys are also three times more likely to be born macrosmic than girls.
There are significant risks to the babies during birth in these cases for thing like shoulder dystocia, umbilical cord compression, broken collarbones, and brachial plexus nerve damage, some of which can be permanent.
For mothers, they can experience increased risk of vaginal tearing, postpartum hemorrhage (which is the leading cause of maternal death), infection, and more.
There are more “giant” babies being born today than there were before 1970, but few studies have been done to find out whether or not they tend to stay bigger as children or to have increased risks for things like type 2 diabetes.
Doctors tend to ascribe the increase in birth weight to the increased obesity rate in much of the world.
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If you want anecdotal evidence, though, I am not obese, did not have gestational diabetes, and had three babies over 8.8 pounds.
None of them are above the 50th percentile in height or weight, several months and years down the line.
So maybe there’s more at play here than doctors currently think – but only more research will be able to tell us for sure.
