Woman Delivers 17-Pound Baby

MOSCOW (AP) -- A small Russian city just got a really big addition: its resident has delivered her 12th baby at 17.05 pounds -- the biggest on the nation's record.

Tatiana Khalina, 42, delivered the girl by Caesarean section at a maternity clinic in Aleisk, a town of 30,000 in the Altai region in southern Siberia, Svetlana Gildeyeva, a nurse at the clinic, said Thursday.

Gildeyeva said the birth on Sept. 17 went smoothly and both the mother and the child were fine. She said the baby, Nadezhda, was transferred from the small Aleisk clinic to a maternity hospital in the bigger city of Barnaul which had better conditions.

The girl was feeling well and developing normally, said Irina Kurdeka, a doctor at the Barnaul hospital.

The daily Moskovsky Komsomolets quoted the local social services chief, Marina Alistratova, as saying that Khalina and her husband weren't tall. She said that Khalina's husband was on contract with a local military unit and the family had modest means.

"We have presented them with a good washing machine, a food package and a card,'' Alistratova told the newspaper. "We will keep supporting them in the future.''

An average weight for newborn babies is around 3.2 kg (7.04 pounds), according to international statistics.

The Guinness Book of Records says the heaviest baby ever was born in the United States in 1879. It weighed 23.12 pounds and died 11 hours after birth. The book also listed 22.8-pound babies born in Italy in 1955 and in South Africa in 1982.

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