Bridget Sharkey
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LEARN MOREPosted: 3:57 p.m. EDT Nov 1, 2023
Sonny Ayres is going home.
The 14-pound baby boy made headlines when he was delivered at Ontario’s Cambridge Memorial Hospital. The newborn shocked everyone when his birth weight was as much as the average 3-month-old.
“Never in our wildest dreams did we think he’d be that big,” the proud father, Chance Ayres, told “Good Morning America.”
But the Ayres family is no stranger to larger-than-average babies. They have four other children, and two were also much larger than the average newborn. Daughter Marigold’s birth weight was 13 pounds, 14 ounces, and son Lucky was 13 pounds, 11 ounces.
Sonny was delivered via cesarean on Oct. 23 — over a week before his due date of Oct. 31. His official weight was 14 pounds, eight ounces.
“Chance is very tall. He’s 6 [feet], 2 [inches]. My dad’s tall, so it runs in the family,” mom Britteney Ayres told ABC's "Good Morning America."
The American Pregnancy Association says most full-term newborns will weigh between six and nine pounds. And according to research collected by pediatric endocrinologists and published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood – Fetal and Neonatal Edition, genes do indeed have a significant impact on a baby’s birth weight.
“Overall there is strong evidence that genetic factors play a significant role in determining birth size,” the study authors write in their report. “Epidemiological studies estimate that environmental influences account for about 25% birth weight variance and genetic influences account for 38 – 80% birth weight variance.”
In an email to “GMA,” the doctor who delivered Sonny said that he was the biggest baby to be born at the hospital since it started its database in 2010. He was also the biggest baby the doctor had ever personally delivered.
Sonny is now home in Cambridge, Ontario, with his siblings — who range in age from 1.5 to 6 — and enjoying being the biggest little guy in the family.
“I’m taking it day by day but I’m just really happy to be home and have a good support system,” the mom told “GMA.”
This story was originally published by Bridget Sharkey on Simplemost.
