A woman has given birth to a 6 kg baby, perhaps Spain's heaviest baby born without going through a caesarean section.
Maxime Lorena Marin, a 40-year-old British woman living in Spain with her Colombian partner, delivered a healthy baby girl weighing 13lb 7oz (6.095kg) after five hours of labour which is generally considered normal. She gave birth naturally without even taking epidural pain relief at the Hospital Marina Salud in Denia, Alicante.
Epidural anesthesia is a painkiller injected to the mother's spine during the childbirth to ease labour pain.
The elated mother said she knew that baby would be big since her previous children weighed around 4.5 kgs at birth but had not expected it to be 'that big'. The baby's size was twice that of the average normal baby.
According to doctors, the process was 'uncomplicated' despite the baby's big size.
"In my 40-year professional career I have never known of any case of a birth with this weight by natural childbirth," Dr Javier Rius, the head of the hospital's department of obstetrics and gynaecology, told BBC.
"We are all very satisfied with the work which we carried out," he added.
The baby is presently placed under the neonatal care.
In a statement released by the hospital, it said the baby is the "biggest baby ever born in Spain through natural childbirth".
In March this year, George King was born weighing 7kg (15lb 7oz) in UK. However, world's heaviest baby was recorded in 1879, when Anna Bates, a Canadian, gave birth to a baby weighing 10.5kg (23lbs 2oz) but died 10 hours after birth. The parents were said to be suffering from rare abnormality called giantism which led to excessive growth.
