Queensland couple introduce their 6kg bundle of joy
This young Queensland couple introduce New Idea to their record-breaking daughter
With her delicious rolls and oh-sochubby cheeks, newborn bub Maisie Lily Macdonald is melting hearts wherever she goes.
‘It’s amazing how good she is,’ proud mum Makaela Kirkby tells New Idea. ‘She’s great with feeding, sleeping. She’s a contented little soul.’
Maisie made headlines earlier this month when she became the biggest baby ever born at Rockhampton Hospital. She was born via caesarean section on September 4, weighing a staggering 6.02kg.
Proud dad Mason Macdonald, from Blackwater in Queensland, exclaims: ‘Maisie was bigger than me and my twin brother Lachlan put together!’
Maisie’s 21-year-old mother – who is of ‘average’ build – said her pregnancy was excruciating: ‘I used to sometimes lay in bed
and roll from one side to another, and it would bring me to tears. I would lose my breath because I could feel how heavy my stomach was.’
From very early on in her pregnancy, Makaela suspected she was carrying a big bub.
‘I was always measuring two weeks ahead and when I compared photos from my last pregnancy, I was a lot bigger.
‘My first was big, so I knew it could happen again.’
Makaela and Mason’s first child, daughter Aubree Rose, one, was 5.14kg when she was born.
It was a traumatic birth for the first-time mum.
‘I was in active labour for 28 hours. I wouldn’t dilate over eight centimetres – it just wasn’t progressing,’ she says.
‘The doctors didn’t realise how big she was – her head was stuck in my pelvis.
‘I ended up going for an emergency C-section, and she had a massive cone-head. It was terrible.’
But when it was Maisie’s turn, Makaela didn’t want to take any chances.
‘The doctors kept asking me if I wanted to try for a VBAC [vaginal birth after caesarean] with Maisie, and I knew I didn’t want to try it all over again to have an emergency caesarean if this baby was as big,’ she explains. ‘Lucky that I chose an elective caesarean.’
Given her unusual size, Maisie was kept in hospital for observation after she was born.
‘They had to test her blood sugar because she was so big,’ Makaela says. ‘But her blood sugars were always perfect.’
Makaela says she tested negative to gestational diabetes, but she has another theory.
‘Big babies run in my side of the family.’