The average newborn weighs seven-and-a-half-pounds at birth, which means Cindy Richmond deserves a sizable push present. On Friday, June 23, Richmond welcomed a 14 pound, 4 ounce boy named Colin via cesarean section at Lexington Medical Center in Lexington, South Carolina.
“I make ‘em big,” Richmond’s husband, Arthur Keisler, told ABC News. “The room completely changed as soon as they got him out. The doctor said, ‘Whoa, this is a big baby.’ They pulled the scale into the operating room and the room erupted into like, ‘Oh, my God, this is the craziest thing ever.’” Indeed: Colin Austin Keisler set the record for the biggest baby ever born at Lexington Medical Center.
Richmond and Keisler were anticipating a hearty baby (their other children weighed 7 pounds, 6 ounces, and 9 pounds, 8 ounces, respectively) but weren’t expecting him to come out the size of a 4-month-old. “When I went to the doctor three weeks ago he was about 10 to 11 pounds and I’m like, ‘Oh, OK.’ So he gained about a pound a week so this makes so much sense now why I was so uncomfortable,” Richmond told ABC News. “But I wasn’t thinking it would be 14 pounds.”
When Keisler realized the newborn onesies they had packed in their hospital bag wouldn’t cut it for Colin, he took a stroll down to the gift shop.“They’re like, ‘Hey, how can I help you today? I was like, ‘Well, I’m here to find something my son can fit into.'” And they said, ‘Oh! Is he a preemie?’ I was like, ‘No, he’s kind of the biggest baby ever born here,’” the proud dad told FOX Carolina.
Keisler noted that his wife was routinely checked for gestational diabetes, a condition that, when left untreated, can cause a newborn to grow very big in utero. “Once he was born they were concerned about blood sugar, but they tested him three times that day he is perfectly fine,” Keisler told ABC News. “He’s just naturally big.”
According to the Guinness World Records, the heaviest baby ever was born in 1879 and weighed 23 pounds, 12 ounces. His mother had giantism.
