A British woman has naturally delivered a 13lb 7oz baby girl.
Maxime Marin’s bouncing bundle of joy was born in Spain and weighed around twice the size of an average baby. She is the biggest ever infant born naturally in the country.
What’s more, 40-year-old Marin did not even need an epidural to deliver Maria Lorena, who is in “perfect health”.
Maria Lorena Marin is in 'perfect health'
Maria was born at Hospital Marina Salud in the Mediterranean city of Denia on Wednesday morning, the hospital said in a statement.
Dr. Javier Rius, the chief of gynaecology at the hospital, said in his 40 years of practice he had never known a baby born naturally to weigh so much.
Marin said she expected the baby, born after 41 weeks, to be "big but not that big" as her three older children each weighed more than 9lb 14oz at birth.
She brushed off the five-hour labour as "simple" and gave birth without an epidural, a painkiller delivered into the spine during childbirth.
In February last year, a baby boy was born in China’s central Henan province, weighing a whopping 15.5lb.
Chun Chun came into the world via caesarean section, with his proud father claiming to feel “very happy” at the birth of such “big, fat son.”
The heaviest birth listed by Guinness World Records belongs to a baby boy born in 1879 in Ohio, who weighed 23 pounds 12 ounces at birth and whose mother was said to be a "giantess." Unfortunately, the baby died 11 hours after birth.
Like their adult counterparts, a heavier baby can often signal health problems.
When a baby is born weighing more than 8 pounds, 13 ounces, the condition is known as “fetal macrosomia” and can be attributed to maternal obesity and diabetes, among other factors.
In 1955 a baby boy weighing 22lbs 8oz was born to Carmelina Fedele in Aversa, Italy.