Fat Babies Are on the Rise in America: Guess How Much They Weigh?!

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
by Mary Fischer 5 hours ago

So, you know how there have been babies born recently who are a whole lot bigger than your average newborn? Like the 13.47-pound infant who was born in Germany last month? Or the 15-pound, 7-ounce boy who arrived back in March in the U.K.? (Yowza.)

Yeah, well now doctors are getting concerned about women having bigger newborns. There has been a 15 to 25 percent increase in "oversized" babies in developed countries (including the U.S.), which they attribute to more moms being obese.

And as you will hear in this video, they've now come up with a new "cutoff" weight as far as what constitutes a newborn being considered a fat baby.

OMG, 8 pounds, 13 ounces?!? That's it?

My little guy weighed in right at 8 pounds, 1 ounce, so I guess he made the cutoff, which means despite the fact that I put on 50 pounds while pregnant with him, I must not have been obese. (Winning.) But even so -- all I heard from people after his birth were things like, "He's HUGE! What the heck did you eat for those nine months?"

And up until that point, I never really considered an 8-pounder to be a big baby, but apparently in the city of Denver where I delivered, that's basically gigantic. (Because of the altitude and super healthy people and all.)

Yes, a 15-pound baby is probably cause for concern -- but should doctors really be getting bent out of shape about babies roughly half that size? (Personally, I don't think so.)

And hasn't it been hammered into our brains for years that a "big, healthy baby" is a good thing? This cutoff number just seems so contradictory, and I'm guessing it's going to wind up confusing a lot of people.

With how weight obsessed our society already is, I worry that the new fat baby number is going to freak out new moms who happen to have infants who aren't teeny-tiny. They really don't need something extra to stress over during those first few weeks.

Ugh. I can picture it now. Some poor new mom is going to bring her 9-pound baby home from the hospital, hear this report, immediately panic, and call the pediatrician wondering if her newborn needs to go on a diet. And then he'll tell her "absolutely not!" because she needs to be breastfeeding that baby every two hours so he'll get the nutrition he needs to put on weight and then she'll be totally confused.

Unless babies are outrageously huge -- can we go ahead and drop the "fat" label, or at least up the number just a little bit? (Like maybe 11 pounds?)

How big was your baby at birth?

Image via Mary Fischer

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mary Fischer

is the writer behind The Mommyologist, and the mom of a future famous comedian. Her current loves include cosmopolitans, reality TV, and shoes that don't pinch her feet.

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