According to doctors, the average weight of a healthy baby is approximately 7 ½ pounds at birth. On Tuesday, June 17^th, a set of well-above-average-weight babies entered the world at a hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina weighing a total of 23 pounds, 1 ounce combined! The boy, Sean William, was born first and was the smaller of the two- tipping the scales at 10 pounds, 14 ounces. His sister, Abigail Rose, weighed a whopping 12 pounds, 3 ounces. They are said to be healthy and in excellent condition. According to their mom, “They’re big and healthy and quiet- except when they’re hungry, which is often.” She also said, “We weren’t ready for how big she [Abigail] was at all.” The hospital staff had to bring in special nursery clothes for baby Abigail because the ones on hand simply were too small.

The babies were born at 38 ½ weeks via C-section only two minutes apart to proud parents Joey and Erin Maynard of Winston-Salem. The twins’ big brother, Aiden Joseph (2 ½) wasn’t a small baby at birth either- weighing in at 10 pounds, 7 ounces. The 36-year-old mom said she was a “little tired, but hanging in there“, just a few days after the delivery. Rightly so, being only 5 ft, 10 inches tall and carrying over 23 pounds not that long ago! In fact, Erin was likely carrying much more than that. When you add in the extra 1-2 pounds for the placenta (or 1-2 for each placenta, if they didn’t share one), the 2+ pounds for amniotic fluid and the weight of the enlarged uterus, she was carrying nearly 30 extra pounds! And this isn’t counting the extra maternal breast tissue, increased maternal blood and fluid in the maternal tissue or the maternal fat stores.

Remarkably, as heavy as twins Sean and Abigail were, they didn’t break the record. They are said to be only the second-heaviest set of twins ever born in the US. According to the hospital, they were about 4 whole pounds shy of the combined weight of a set of Arkansas twins delivered back in 1927. They weighed a hefty 27 pounds, 12 ounces total. But, there was no public records found for any heavier twins born since 1900. According to a doctor from the hospital where the twins were born, the biggest of the Maynard twins, Abigail, was already the size of the average 6-week-old baby only three days after her birth. Now, that’s a big newborn!

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