Chennai:Â In what seemed to be an accomplishment, doctors of Government Kasturba Gandhi Hospital for Women and Children (KGH) recently delivered a baby boy weighing 5.120 kg. When Jayashree (38), the patient, came for review, little did the doctors anticipate the baby to weigh so much. They estimated that it would be around 4.2 kg.
Though the boy is not the city’s heaviest – he became the talk of the town as it was a normal delivery.
“Around one in 1,800 babies is expected to be macrosomia (weighing more than 4 kg during birth),” said hospital director, Dr S Vijaya.
The patient, a resident of Saidapet, gave birth to her first child 10 years ago that weighed 3.2 kg.
“She did not take any specific diet during her pregnancy, but rather was on regular diet consisting of fruits, veggies and meat. The factor that helped was that she went off junk food and was more keen on getting the right nutrients,’ said KGH Assistant Professor, R Vidhya, who led the team to deliver the baby.
She added that there was no family history for the patient of babies of this weight being born.
The mother and child were under observation for two days and screened for anomalies and maladies. The scan reports revealed that the vitals of the child are healthy. To ensure that the baby grows up right, the pediatricians in the hospital have been advised to keep track of the baby till it grows up.
Speaking about the difficulty in the confinement, Dr Vijaya said, “We anticipated shoulder difficulty, but since the mother was also co-operative, it did not cause much inconvenience.”