A family welcomed a bouncing baby boy last month — born nearly twice the size of the average baby.
“Oh, it was dumbfounding,” proud father Chance Ayres of Cambridge, Ontario, told Fox News Digital.
“It was a mind-blowing experience,” he said. “The way the doctors and nurses were cheering. It was like the [Toronto] Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup. It was insane. Everybody was jumping and screaming. It was fun.”
Sonny Ayres — the fifth child of Chance and Britteney Ayres — was born via Caesarean section on Oct. 23 at Cambridge Memorial Hospital, weighing 14 pounds, 8 ounces. He was 55 centimeters long.
“I never thought in a million years [he’d] be 14½ pounds,” Chance Ayres said.
“Everybody was making bets as to how big he was going to be, even the doctors and nurses.”
But Sonny exceeded everyone’s expectations, even though two of his siblings had been born at over 13 pounds.
“They put him on the scale, and it was wild,” Chance Ayres said.
“When they actually said 14.8, we all just kind of stopped and stared at each other and then next thing you know, it was like — wow this is crazy,” the dad of five added.
The average weight for a full-term baby is between 7 pounds, 2 ounces, and 7 pounds, 6 ounces, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.
Larger babies are often born at around 9 pounds or more, but a baby over 14 pounds surprised even Britteney Ayres’ physician.
“I have had the honor of looking after Britteney and delivering her last three children,” Dr. Asa Ahimbisibwe, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Cambridge Memorial Hospital, told Fox News Digital.
“She previously had a big baby that was 13 pounds, 14 ounces. We knew that this baby would also be a big one, but we did not expect that he would be this big.”
Ahimbisibwe confirmed that when Sonny was born, everyone in the operating room cheered and was surprised.
“When the baby tipped the scales, it became real that he was indeed a big baby,” Ahimbisibwe said.
The heaviest birth on record for a newborn, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is 22 pounds.
“When the baby tipped the scales, it became real that he was indeed a big baby.”
Dr. Asa Ahimbisibwe
That baby was born in a home in Seville, Ohio, on Jan. 19, 1879. The baby, who was not officially named but was referred to as “Babe,” died just 11 hours later.
Sonny’s birth, with his record-setting weight — at least since 2010 — definitely has turned heads among hospital staff.
“I have not delivered such a big baby before and have not seen one delivered even throughout my training,” Ahimbisibwe said.
BORN (Better Outcomes Registry and Network) is a provincial perinatal, newborn and child registry that helps to facilitate quality care for families across Ontario, Canada.
“A search of this registry by the Cambridge Memorial Hospital staff went as far back as 2010 and found that only five babies were born [weighing] more than 6,000 grams,” or 13.2 pounds, Ahimbisibwe said.
“And yes, this baby was the biggest at the hospital from 2010.”
The surprise factor came into play as Britteney Ayres’ ultrasound, just a week before the birth, predicted the baby weighed 6,000 grams.
“So even if we knew it was going to be a big baby,” Ahimbisibwe said, “the surprise was more that he was bigger than all her previous babies.”
A variety of factors can contribute to a baby’s exceptionally large size.
“In general, what predicts a big baby is genetics, post dates and poorly controlled diabetes,” Ahimbisibwe said.
“But to be sure, Britteney did not have any diabetes during this pregnancy,” said the doctor.
“I think she simply makes big babies.”
“I’m 5’ 5″ or 5’ 6″,” Britteney Ayres said. “But Chance is very tall and he has tall family members. My dad’s tall. My brother’s tall. So yeah, I guess it just runs in the family.”
Chance Ayres agreed.
“I was myself born 9 pounds, 9 ounces, or so, and I know that her brother was born at nine pounds-plus,” he said.
“So it runs in the family, that’s for sure. But something just happened with me and Britteney that made [him] so massive.”
“It was a mind-blowing experience.”
Chance Ayres
Of the Ayres’ children — Chance, 6, Everett, 5, Lucky, 3, and Marigold, 1, and now Sonny — Ahimbisibwe delivered the last three.
“He is always calm, cool and collected,” Britteney Ayres said, “which is very good.”
The older kids are fairly unaware that their birth weights have been upstaged, Chance Ayres said.
“They’re just really happy to have [the baby] home because for the time that Britteney was pregnant, we kept saying, ‘Oh, Sonny’s coming, Sonny’s coming.’ So when he finally did come, they were all just over the moon jumping around, going crazy.”
Little Chance, the family’s oldest child, did take note of his new brother’s size.
“At the hospital, we got to FaceTime and Chancy was like, ‘That’s a fat baby,’” Britteney Ayres said.
“But, oh my goodness, he is right,” she added.
Now the family is settling in at home.
“He is a dream,” said Chance Ayres, who does site work for a roofing company.
“He is very inquisitive,” Chance Ayres added. “He opens his eyes and he looks around and you see him staring around and seeing faces and putting names or putting the voices to faces. But he’s so young that he just eats and sleeps for the most part.”
Britteney Ayres, who plans to go back for her master’s degree in psychology once things “settle down a bit,” said her family is now complete.
“We’re done at five,” Britteney Ayres said. “We have the fab five.”