600-Pound Woman Births 40-Pound Baby – Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
A 600-pound woman in Australia gave birth to a 40-pound baby.
The Truth:
Reports of a 40-pound newborn in Australia are false.
The fake news website World News Daily Report made that claim in an article that was quickly shared more than 125,000 times on Facebook. According to the fake news report:
A 600-pound woman has given birth to a 40-pound baby at Perth’s King Edward Memorial Hospital, a record-breaking weight that could possibly make the newborn the largest baby ever born, reports the Western Australian Herald this morning.
The baby of gigantic size surprised doctors and staff members who were not fully prepared for such an event but miraculously managed to give birth to the 40-pound (18 kilos) baby who remains in a healthy state, has confirmed a hospital spokesman.
But World News Daily Report’s disclaimer reveals that the website isn’t a credible source of news:
WNDR assumes however all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website – even those based on real people – are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any persons, living, dead, or undead is purely a miracle.
The photo that appears with the story is actually of a 17.1-pound baby that was born to a Siberian in 2007. Baby Nadia gained a lot of attention for her size, but she’s not the largest baby on record. That honor belongs to a baby boy from Italy who tipped the scales at more than 22 pounds in 1955, according to the Guinness World Book of Records.
The eRumor may have been inspired by the tale of Juanita Valentia Hernandez, a 10-month old from Columbia who weighed 44 pounds. Baby Juanita’s story went viral days before the eRumor surfaced. She weighed 6 pounds at birth, and doctors were unable to explain her extreme weight gain, Yahoo News reports.