Giant baby weighs in at 6.52kg

By Angela Thompson
Updated November 5 2012 - 7:40pm, first published February 10 2009 - 10:54am
Two weeks after his birth, Cordell Hayman has slimmed to 6.13kg.  Pictures: ANDY ZAKELI
Two weeks after his birth, Cordell Hayman has slimmed to 6.13kg. Pictures: ANDY ZAKELI
Cordell Aidan Hayman with parents Kerry Barry and Glenn Hayman. Cordell tipped the scales at 6.52kg, the size of an average four-month-old.
Cordell Aidan Hayman with parents Kerry Barry and Glenn Hayman. Cordell tipped the scales at 6.52kg, the size of an average four-month-old.

His was an entrance 34 weeks in the making, but Cordell Hayman was left to bask in the afterglow of his big moment buck naked, with nothing to wear.Born double the size of most babies and with a possible claim to the title of Illawarra's biggest newborn, Cordell's derriere was so unexpectedly large the nappies his parents brought couldn't contain it."Newborn nappies wouldn't fit him so they had to call the children's ward to get nappies," Cordell's father Glenn Hayman, of Wollongong, said. "He's wearing crawler nappies."We knew that he was going to be big, but not that big."Definitive records of the region's biggest babies don't exist but at 6.52kg - almost double the 3.37kg Australian average - Cordell has joined the ranks of Australia's tiny heavyweights.He is the heaviest newborn born at Wollongong Hospital in staff memory and is bigger than any baby Carol Marxsen, nurse unit manager of Figtree Private Hospital's special care nursery, has seen in 13 years on the job."That's pretty big - very big, actually," she said."Let's just hope the parents didn't buy too many five-0s." Cordell's mother Kerrie Barry had some idea what to expect from her whopping great bundle of joy.Cordell's big sister Bree, now 4, weighed more than 4.9kg at birth, and scans with a 15 per cent margin for error showed Cordell weighed about 6.1kg the week before his birth on January 27.The extra kilos have leant a cherubic quality to the sleepy newcomer, who is 59cm long and has a head 38cm in circumference.But the chubby cheeks belie the seriousness of the condition that made him so big - gestational diabetes."People with gestational diabetes will have a greater risk of a (large baby) because the maternal glucose level is high and the maternal glucose level crosses the placenta but the maternal insulin does not," Illawarra Diabetes Centre principal Professor Robert Moses said. "So the baby therefore gets a very high glucose level and then converts this into fat."Cordell had to be fed through tubes after he was born and at one point was flown to Randwick Children's Hospital so doctors could investigate a possible heart murmur.He remained in hospital for two weeks before he was well enough to finally go home yesterday.Ms Barry thanked Telstra Child Flight and staff at Wollongong's neonatal unit for their help. "There was a lot of support and encouragement, and they were very relaxing. When I was being dramatic they were the ones to calm me down." And yes, Cordell was born by Caesarean section.

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