When Sosefina Tagalu was pregnant with her third son, everyone guessed the baby would be heavy. But the 37-year-old California mother, who gained 110 pounds during the pregnancy, was not prepared to set a baby weight record when her son was born.
"Everyone was guessing before we weighed him," Tagalu told The Huffington Post Tuesday. "The nurses were guessing 10 or 11 pounds and the doctor guessed 14."
They were all wrong. Tagalu gave birth to a 16-pound boy on Aug. 23, 2013. The baby, Sammisano Joshua Talai Otuhiva, is said to be the California's largest baby ever born.
But another baby in southern California, 15-pound Andrew Jacob Cervantez, was recently named California's heaviest when he was born in January.
"I"ll be honest with you. I was hurt that the claim wasn't ours," Pavasio Otuhiva, Sammisano's father, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "I wanted to share our story."
Sammisano's parents did not know about the 15-pound baby until they read about him in a newspaper. They waived their right to medical privacy to prove their son's remarkable weight.
"My friends and family told me I needed to set the record straight," Tagalu told the San Francisco Chronicle. "They said you have an amazing gift that nobody else has."
Tagalu, who is 5-foot-3 inches tall, had to have a cesarean section when she gave birth. The pregnancy left her with lingering backaches and pain in her sciatic nerve. Sammisano, born at 16 pounds, 1.7 ounces, was so large the hospital did not have diapers to fit him.
"You know, diapers only go up to size 6," Tagalu told the San Francisco Chronicle. "I don't know what I'm going to do when he gets bigger."
Sammisano is now five months old and 25 pounds- the same weight of a baby more than three times his age.
Tagalu even has to feed her newborn while he is sitting in a walker or car seat because he is too heavy to carry.
It is hard to officially determine if Sammisano is California' largest baby because the law protects children's medical records, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Before Sammisano was born, in 2013 the largest baby born in the U.S. was 14 pounds.
Click here to see more pictures of Sammisano.
