Ashley and Greg Box welcomed a very big bundle of joy when their son
Kasen Michael was born Monday. The newborn weighed in at an impressive
12 pounds, 8 ounces — and measured a full 2 feet tall.
(Photo: Ashley Box)
“I couldn’t believe it,” Ashley told KHOU.
The Missouri couple wasn’t expecting Kasen until Jan. 18, and the
mother said she didn’t think the baby, her second child, would be larger
than 10 pounds. His delivery didn’t go as anticipated either.
STORY: ‘Smallest Surviving Baby,’ Born 14 Weeks Premature, Headed Home
“We
pushed and no progress,” said Ashley, who ended up having a cesarean
section at Citizens Memorial Hospital in Bolivar, Mo. And while Ashley
acknowledges that her son is “huge,” she added that, “To me, he feels
small.”
STORY: 44-Pound Baby Weighs as Much as a 5-Year-Old
(Photo: Ashley Box)Perhaps
it’s the perspective she’s learned from her older son, Blake, 2. The
toddler was born weighing 2 pounds less than Kasen but is already
wearing the clothes of a 4-year-old. When Blake met his “little”
brother, dad Greg said the toddler kissed Kasen, told him that he loved
him, and said, “‘Eat baby.’ It was hilarious.” 
The Box brothers, Kasen and Blake (Photo: Ashley BoxKasen’s
incredible size isn’t record-breaking, though, rare as it may be in
Missouri, where KHOU reports that, according to the state’s Department
of Health and Senior Services, only 1.4 percent of babies born in
Missouri between 1990 and 2013 weighed more than 9.92 pounds. Guinness World Records
identifies the heaviest surviving baby born to a healthy mother,
Italy’s Carmelina Fedele in 1955, as weighing 22 pounds, 8 ounces. (In
1879, Anna Bates, an Ohioan with gigantism, welcomed a 23-pound,
12-ounce son, but he died 11 hours later.) In more recent news, a
December baby born in Colorado weighed in at 13 pounds, 13 ounces — but 2 inches shorter than newborn Kasen at 22 inches long.