As a childless, single man, especially one that lives in the Peter Pan playground that is New York City, I know next to nothing about babies. I know you’re not supposed to shake them or drop them, and they like keys. Other baby information, like what’s a normal weight at birth? I’m at a loss.
The variance in the size of fresh-born babies, though, naturally begs certain questions in my brain. Namely, what’s the biggest baby that anyone’s ever managed to heave-ho out of their ho-ho? (If you had any doubts about me being single and childless, that last sentence should confirm it.)
Forbes, not exactly a publication I associate with children, tells me an average baby is between roughly six and eight pounds. As for their length, which sounds like a confusing measurement until you remember they can’t stand up, the average is right around 19 and a half inches. Forbes also notes that a baby’s weight at birth doesn’t indicate their weight later in life, which I have to acknowledge but I do not have to believe. Even with this caveat, I have to think that the largest baby ever born wasn’t going to end up being Mugsy Bogues, you know?
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But that’s just the baseline. Guinness, of course, has the true answer I’m looking for: a baby that was known only as “Babe,” born in January 1879 and weighing a whopping 22 pounds.
Even an hour ago, before I knew what babies were supposed to weigh, I knew that wasn’t the right number. That means that Babe, upon first breath, weighed almost exactly the same as a classic 4.5-quart KitchenAid stand mixer. Unfortunately, Babe wasn’t long for this world. The massive little man passed away 11 hours later despite appearing perfectly healthy, maybe simply because it was 1879. His father described Babe as looking like “an ordinary child of six months.”
Speaking of parents, let’s move on to the obvious question of their size. Were they average people who just ended up growing an enormous embryo? A simple strange twist of biology?
Not really. Babe’s parents, Martin Van Buren Bates and Anna Swan, were both clinical giants, who performed in circus sideshows. Martin stood seven feet, nine inches tall, and Anna was even taller, at seven foot, eleven inches. In fact, even before Babe was born, he was the son of future Guinness royalty, as Martin and Anna are still the tallest married couple ever recorded.