Baby Nadia Barabanova shocked doctors and her parents as she weighed in at a whopping 17.1 pounds (7.75 kg). Nadia was delivered by caesarean section in the local maternity hospital in the Altai region of Siberia on September 17. She is the latest addition to a family already comprising eight sisters and three brothers.
Watch: footage of giant baby Nadia Barabanova

43-year-old mother Tatyana Barabanova told reporters that Nadia’s size came as a total shock as none of her other children had weighed more than 5kg at birth. She added that, owing to a lack of money, she’d relied on a diet of potatoes, tomatoes and noodles throughout the pregnancy. According to the World Health Organisation, the average birth weight of a newborn baby is 7.1 pounds (3.2 kg).

Oh baby! The world’s biggest births

But Nadia isn’t the only big baby to be born this year. In January, Mexican hospital staff were amazed at the size of newborn Antonio Vasconcelos. Dubbed “Super Tonio” by doctors, he weighed 14.5 pounds at birth but was perfectly healthy. In the same month, Ademilton dos Santos became the heaviest boy ever born in Brazil after weighing in at 17 pounds. In August, British baby Shaune Ellerton joined the ranks of titanic toddlers after tipping the scales at 14 pounds, the average weight of a 6-month-old child.

Despite their surprising size, these modern day tot-zillas pale into comparison to the largest baby ever born. Anna Haining Bates was a Canadian famed for her great height. She was reckoned to be 7 feet 5 inches (2.27 metres) tall at the peak of her physical stature. In January 1879, she gave birth to the largest baby ever recorded. The baby weighed 22 pounds (10.6 kg) and measured 28 inches (71 cm) in length. Sadly, due to complications with the delivery, the baby only survived a couple of hours.