A mum gave birth to three supersized babies – weighing a total of over a whopping 31lbs. Nursery practitioner Sarah Richards, aged 34, welcomed her first child, Freddie, on May 6, 2008 – weighing in at 9lbs 8oz (4.3kg).
Eight years later, on January 21, 2016, Sarah gave birth to her second, Sofia, who was born at an eye-watering 11 lbs 9oz (5.2kg) – bigger than a 10-person Christmas turkey.
Finally, on the April 26, 2021, Sarah, from Manchester, and her husband welcomed Lacey-Jane – who gave Sofia a run for her money at 10lbs 6oz (4.7kg).
Throughout all three, Sarah was told by people that she looked much further ahead in her pregnancy – with many questioning if she was having twins. With Freddie, she was told by people in the hospital that her newborn looked like he was already three months old.
Thanks to their chunky sizes, all three babies also wore clothes for children between the ages of three and six just months after being born. The average birth weight for babies in the UK is around 7lb 8oz (3.4 kg) for boys 7lb 4oz (3.3 kg) for girls.
Sarah said: “I’m a twin myself and Sofia’s birthweight was more than my twin sister and I put together. All the time people would think I was much further ahead and with Lacey-Jane people thought I was carrying twins.
“With Sofia, I bought the first size nappies and she had to go straight to bigger sizes. And because Freddie was big we just bought 0-3 size nappies in preparation.
“We’ve shown them pictures of when they were born – we refer to Sofia as our little sumo wrestler. All three of them now are really skinny – when people hear how much they weighed at birth they’re gobsmacked at how they look now.”
Sarah believes the reason behind their weight is believed to be their dad’s birth weight. She added: “No one could believe how big they were. Their dad was over 9lbs when he was born.
“With Freddie, I was only 16 and it was a really straightforward pregnancy and he ended up being born early with an emergency c-section. You could tell he was going to be on the bigger side but not nearly 10lbs. Again, with Sofia no complications but they could tell she was big quite early on.
“I was tested for diabetes but it came back negative so we planned a c-section and they estimated her weight to be the same as Freddie so when she came out at 11lbs 9oz it was quite a shock.
“Lacey-Jane, again there wasn’t much in the way of sickness but I had extra fluid. She was big from the start as well. At this point, I had a diabetes diagnosis so they think they may have missed it with Sofia.
“Lacey-Jane was born six weeks early, she was getting too big – in three days they think she grew around 1.5lbs”