Woman Gives Birth to 12-Pound Baby

A 37-year-old woman gave birth to a baby boy weighing 12 pounds 5 ounces.

Matthew Joseph Potyak was born by Caesarean section at 11:10 a.m. Tuesday in Benedictine Hospital in Kingston, 50 miles south of Albany.

“When his head came out, the one doctor said, ‘Oh my God, he’s enormous,’” his mother, Jane McSpirit, told the Kingston Daily Freeman in Thursday editions. “Then his hand came out, and they said, ‘Look how big his hand is.’ I thought he was going to jump out all by himself.”

Most newborns weigh between 7 and 9 pounds, and don’t reach Matthew’s birth weight until they are between 5 and 10 weeks old, said hospital spokeswoman Lucy Brandenburg.

Matthew has one older sister. McSpirit’s 3-year-old daughter Samantha weighed 10 pounds 6 ounces at birth.

McSpirit and Joseph Potyak said they don’t plan to have any more children.

In October 2001, then-28-year-old Amy Volke-Baldwin, of Batavia, gave birth to a baby girl weighing 14 pounds 3 ounces at Strong Memorial Hospital. She had suffered from diabetes during her pregnancy.