Baby Weighing Over 13 Pounds Born Vaginally in Germany

A baby weighing 13.47 pounds was born vaginally in Germany last week.

The baby girl, Jasleen, measured nearly 23 inches long at the time of birth. The hospital authorities said that she was born vaginally and not through C-section.

"We anticipated that the child would be big," said Holger Stepan, chief of obstetrics. "We prepared in advance by assembling a special team (of doctors and midwives) to be ready for any possible complications

According to the doctors, the mother of the baby suffered from gestational diabetes. Gestational diabetes sometimes leads to the birth of heavy babies. They said that the mother was not diagnosed.  However, the authorities said that both the mother and the baby were doing fine.

Babies of mothers with gestational diabetes generally suffer from low levels of blood sugar and it is advised that they should be examined closely after birth, reported LiveScience.

"The main nutrient that controls babies' growth is sugar," Dr Kristin Atkins, a specialist in maternal and fetal medicine at the University of Maryland School Of Medicine, told LiveScience in a 2011 interview. "Therefore, mothers with diabetes that have elevated blood sugars are more likely to have big babies."

The world's heaviest baby weighed over 23 pounds at the time of birth and was born in Seville, Ohio, on January 19, 1879, but died 11 hours later. (Guinness World Records website.)