BARNAUL,
Russia - A Siberian woman who gave birth to her 12th child — doing more
than her fair share to stem Russia’s population decline — was stunned
to find that little Nadia weighed in at a massive 17 pounds, 1 ounce.
Nadia was delivered by Caesarean section in the local maternity
hospital in the Altai region on September 17, joining eight sisters and
three brothers, a local reporter said.
“We were all simply in shock,” said Nadia’s mother, Tatyana Barabanova,
43. “What did the father say? He couldn’t say a thing — he just stood
there blinking.”
“I ate everything, we don’t have the money for special foods so I just
ate potatoes, noodles and tomatoes,” she told the reporter, adding that
all her previous babies had weighed more than 11 pounds.
The Guinness World Records lists a 22 pound, 4 ounce baby boy born in
Italy in 1955, and a 23 pound, 8 ounce baby boy who was born in the
United States in 1879 but died 11 hours later.
The average weight for most healthy newborn babies is around 7 pounds, 6 ounces, according to World Health Organization figures.