What’s the Largest Baby Ever Born?

Humans are not incredibly large creatures. Like other mammals that give birth to their young, human babies are just a fraction of the size of their adult parents. Yet, some babies are bigger than others, stretching to the end of the bell curve. Every once in a while, something amazing happens, and a human baby is born that is astonishingly large. Today, we’re going to discover the largest baby ever born.

We will reveal interesting facts about the biggest baby ever born, the location of the historic event, and more. We’ll even show you what species gives birth to the largest babies in the world!

What Is the Average Size of a Baby Human?

Before we start looking at the biggest babies in the world, we need to set a baseline. So, how large is an average baby human? On average, human babies measure 19 ¾ inches in length from head to toe and weigh about 7 lbs.

Many different factors can influence the size of a baby while it is gestating or when it is born. For example, males are larger than females when they are gestating, but the gap between them is apparently shrinking. Males weigh approximately 100g more than females on average at birth.

Premature babies tend to have a lower birth weight and size. Babies that are born into poor areas are also at a higher risk for maintaining a low weight at birth due to malnutrition.

Also, newborn babies lose anywhere between 7% and 10% of their total body weight in their first days of life. So, their weight will certainly change from the time they’re born until their first checkup.

What’s the Largest Baby Ever Born?

The largest baby ever born weighed 23 lbs 9 ounces, and 28 inches long. That is over three times the weight of the average baby as well as 10 inches longer than the average child.

The baby was born to Anna Haining Bates, one of the largest women to have ever lived at 7 feet 11 inches, and had a father named Martin Van Buren Bates, who stood 7 feet 9 inches tall.

Unfortunately, the baby boy did not live long and passed away only 11 hours after he was born.

Both mother and father were renowned in their time for their height. They met during a circus in which Martin Van Buren Bates was traveling. Before that, Anna had been a performer, including playing Lady Macbeth. Martin Van Buren Bates was a captain in the Confederate States Army. He was called the “Kentucky River Giant” as well as the “Giant of the South.”

After the war, he became a teacher before and eventually became a performer with his wife. The two were famously wed at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, England. Interestingly, their wedding drew thousands of on-lookers, well-wishers, and people trying to attend. Supposedly, they received a gift from Queen Victoria, too.

What’s the Second-Largest Baby?

The second-largest baby ever born, and the largest baby to survive birth, was 22 pounds 8 ounces and was born in 1955. The baby measured 28 inches long at the time it was born. We don’t know a lot about this baby, though.

For example, the birth record states that the baby was born sometime in September 1955. We also know that the mother was named Carmelina Fedele and lived in Aversa, Italy. Aside from that, we don’t know what happened to the baby, only that it survived its infancy.

Other stories of heavy babies have persisted in the modern-day, but they have not been considered the largest since too little information is available about them. For example, a baby was born in Turkey in the year 1961 that supposedly weighed 24 lbs. Yet, no records of the child exist, and there is no reliable source for it because it was first announced in 1978.

Do Big Babies Become Big Adults?

While there is no exact way to predict how large a baby will grow up to be, it is thought that big babies generally do grow into big adults. There are studies that have shown a linear correlation (which is a measure of dependence between two random variables) between how much a baby weighs at birth and the size they may become as an adult.

It is also suggested that the length of a baby at birth is often associated with how tall they may become, although this is not always a guarantee or an indicator of what may happen as they grow. Babies that top the height charts quite often are the tallest in their classes but that isn’t a sure indication of their eventual height and weight.

What’s the Smallest Baby Ever Born That Survived Infancy?

We’ve spoken of the heaviest baby ever born. At the other end of the size spectrum is the smallest baby to ever survive infancy. The infant was just 7.47 ounces when she was born and only measured 9.4 inches in length. The child is named Kwek Yu Xuan and was born in Singapore. She was discharged after spending thirteen months in the hospital.

The baby was delivered at just 25 weeks via C-section. Normal babies are delivered after about 40 weeks. The chances of survival for a child that is delivered that early are very slim, but the baby appears to be doing well right now. In fact, the child was discharged from the hospital in August 2021, and she was sent home with her parents. She has a few difficulties associated with being born prematurely.

However, as of the last update with the news, the baby is doing well. Before that, children weighing just 8 ounces, 14.8 ounces, and more have survived their infancy. The advances in medical care have allowed children to survive in conditions that would have been impossible decades ago.

What Species Has the Largest Babies?

The blue whale has the largest babies of any species on Earth today. The average baby blue whale is about 20 to 23 feet long and between 5,000 and 6,000 pounds. These babies are born after about a year of gestation within their mother. Also, the average blue whale can live between 80 and 90 years, meaning that blue whale mothers can produce dozens of calves throughout their lives, hypothetically.

Blue whales are the largest animals in the world today, and they are far larger than any terrestrial animals in the past and present. In fact, they make even the largest dinosaurs that ever roamed the earth seem utterly small in comparison.

Human babies are not very large. They only weigh about 7 pounds and measure about 19 inches long when they’re born. However, the largest baby ever born was over triple that weight and much longer. It seems a little macabre to split hairs on whether a baby survived its infancy to award a record for being the largest baby born.

In any case, the baby born to the Bates family was immense and was the child of two very interesting people.  

The photo featured at the top of this post is © New Africa/Shutterstock.com