Britain's third biggest girl makes waves after water birth: She weighs in at 12lb 6oz

A baby girl has made waves when she was born in a water birth - weighing an astonishing 12lb 6oz.
Bethany Jane Turner, who arrived in a birthing pool at North Manchester General Hospital, is Britain’s third biggest baby girl born naturally. Remarkably her mother Naomi gave birth only with gas and air.

Mrs Turner, 33, and husband Gavin, 32, had no idea that their daughter would be so huge.

Our big baby girl: Bethany Jane Turner surprised her parents Naomi and Gavin by weighing 4lb more than her siblings did at birth
Their other children Katie, eight, and Billy, five, weighed in at 8lb 10oz and 8lb 9oz respectively, and the couple expected Bethany to be a similar size. The average baby girl is almost half the size at 7lb 4oz.
Her grandfather Peter Lowe, 54, has nicknamed her Popeye because she has rolls of fat around her arms.

Naomi, an optical assistant from Bury, said: 'It wasn’t until she was born that we realised she was so big. They put her on the scales and everyone was shocked. I was struggling and I was a bit out of it towards the end of the labour but we still managed to have a natural water birth.
'It was perfectly fine and the labour was no more painful than the two other births.'
Bethany was born a fortnight overdue at midnight on May 11 - after a three-and-a-half hour labour.

Naomi and Gavin, a construction site manager, were able to take her home after two days in hospital and praised staff for their care.
Sam Wagner, midwife at The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust which runs the hospital, said: 'It was an absolute delight to support Naomi throughout her water birth.
'We were all surprised when baby Bethany arrived with a huge splash weighing 12lb 6oz, a first for the birth centre,' said Sam.

The national record for the biggest naturally born baby girl is held by Suzie Devendale, from Swindon, who was born weighing 12lb 12oz in February.
Most big babies are born by caesarean, including Britain’s biggest baby girl Niamh O’Halloran - weighing 14lbs 4oz in February.
The heaviest baby ever born was in January 1979 when Anna Bates gave birth in Ohio to a boy that weighed 23lb 12ozs but he died 11 hours later. The world’s heaviest surviving baby was another boy, born weighing 22lb 8oz in Italy in Italy in 1955.

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