Were You a Big Baby at Birth? Your Infant May Be Also, Study Finds

By Cara Murez HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Sept. 7, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- If you were a big baby -- or your spouse or partner was -- your baby has a good chance of being big, too.

New research shows parents who were large babies are more likely to give birth to a large baby.

Knowing this has the potential to improve prenatal care and interventions by identifying which pregnancies have higher risk of labor and delivery complications.

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To study this, researchers combined information on parents' birthweight to pregnancies they parented, over 50 years. Data on nearly 648,000 singleton births in Norway were included.

Researchers defined macrosomia, the scientific word for a big baby, as 4,500 grams -- about 10 pounds.