A woman in Brazil is recovering after welcoming a 16-pound baby boy earlier this month.
Cleidiane Santos dos Santos, 27, gave birth to son Angerson on Jan. 18 at Hospital Padre Colombo in Parintins, Amazonas State, according to Brazilian newspaper O Globo. The infant, who measured 2 feet long, was delivered via C-section.
Dr. Artemisia Pessoa, an OBGYN at Hospital Padre Colombo, said Angerson is being monitored in the neonatal intensive care unit.
“We are just feeling joy, satisfaction and gratitude for everything having worked out in this case,” Pessoa told O Globo, noting that it was a “rare” and “risky” situation, due to the baby's size.
According to the American Pregnancy Association, most full-term babies (39 to 40 weeks gestation) weigh between 6 and 9 pounds.
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While speaking with O Globo, dos Santos praised her medical team for the care she and Angerson are receiving.
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“I don’t know what would have become of me,” dos Santos said. “So I thank each one of them.”
A post on the hospital’s Facebook page shared that Angerson is breastfeeding.
High birth weight — more than 8 pounds, 13 ounces — puts a child at risk for having high blood sugar and breathing problems, according to the National Library of Medicine.
The Guinness World record for the heaviest baby to survive infancy belongs to a boy weighing 22 pounds, 8 ounces, who was born in Aversa, Italy, in 1955. In 2019, a New York woman named Joy Buckley gave birth to a daughter who weighed 15 pounds, 5 ounces.
“I felt like I had been hit by two tractor-trailers simultaneously,’’ Buckley told The Washington Post about her condition the next morning.
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