Giant Baby Boy Born in California

Disbelief in the delivery room

Matthew Anthony Maldanado weighed in at 14 pounds, 3.6 ounces after mom gave birth following a C-section at a Salinas, California, hospital.

Baby Matthew arrived Monday at 6:19 a.m. after the mother, Emily, was in labor for two days.  The father, Jose, was told to expect a big baby.

There was disbelief in the delivery room.

Maldanado said she didn't believe it when she had the C-section. "They took him out and the doctor started saying damn, so they put him on the scale, 14 pounds, 3.6 ounces."

Natividad Medical Center's Dr. Roberta Bruni said of the child's birth weight, "There was an absolutely incredible number so I thought they'd transposed and then I came in here and it wasn't a transposition."

No one in the neo-natal intensive care unit had ever seen a baby this big before.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the biggest baby ever born belonged to Canadian Anna Bates, who gave birth to a boy weighing 23 pounds, 12 ounces, and was 30 inches long back in 1879. In recent memory, an Indonesian woman birthed a boy weighing 19 pounds, the size of an average toddler.

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