A mum has given birth to a whopping 14lb 15oz baby – believed to be the third biggest ever born in the UK.
Cherral Mitchell, 31, of Thame, Oxfordshire, required the assistance of two midwives to deliver baby Alpha, who surprised hospital workers by weighing more than a stone immediately after delivery.
The infant has since been given the nicknames ‘Baby Hippo’ and ‘Butter Bean’ due to his unusually large size.
But it wasn’t just his weight that surprised the new mum, but the fact that he was conceived with husband Tyson, 35, an electrical engineer, despite Mitchell having a contraceptive coil fitted.
“We didn’t think he was going to be that big,” Mrs. Mitchell said of Alpha’s size at birth.
“Everyone kept laughing when his head came out. My husband Tyson was like, ‘oh my God he’s chunky’.”
Mrs. Mitchell explained how two midwives had to assist her to push the newborn out.
“There were two nurses pulling – one was trying to push him down to get him out,” she said.
“The nurses said it had to be the biggest baby and were on their phones googling. He’s a bit of a pumpkin baby with it being so close to Halloween.”
Alpha, who was delivered on Thursday at 38 weeks, is thought to be the third-largest baby in the UK, with the current record holder weighing 15lb 8oz. Guy Carr was born in the year 1992.
The second-largest is 15 pounds 7 ounces. George King, a Gloucester native, was born in 2013.
Alpha’s growth is thought to be related to his ingesting his mother’s sugary secretions while in the womb, according to doctors.
“They assume Alpha was in sweeter amniotic fluid because I was detected late with gestational diabetes,” Mrs. Mitchell, a stay-at-home mom, adds.
“So he was drinking a lot and peeing a lot and getting a high intake of sugar.”
At 37 weeks Alpha was estimated to be 11lb 1oz in a scan, but he grew by three pounds before he was born a week later via a caesarian section at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
“My stomach was big but not that massive so I don’t know where he was hiding,” she continues.
“My other children were all normal-sized,” she says.
Surprisingly, she didn’t require sutures after the birth and relied solely on gas and air for pain treatment.
Midwives and physicians at North Middlesex University Hospital assisted in the delivery of one of the largest infants ever delivered naturally in England in 2019.
