Joy Buckley thought she might give birth to a big baby, but she definitely wasn’t expecting the arrival of her 15-pound, 5-ounce girl.
Reports suggest her daughter, Harper, is a “record-breaking” baby when it comes to her size – she’s thought to be the largest ever child to be born at Arnot Odgen Medical Center in New York.
Baby Harper measured 23-and-a-quarter inches and was born at 9.09am on 12 March. The birth was “pretty intense”, Joy tells HuffPost UK. “It took two doctors and a vacuum to deliver her,” she says. “She was wedged up under my rib cage. I could feel the pressure of them trying to get her out. I did end up getting sick to my stomach from the pulling and pushing they were doing to my body.”
Eventually she was delivered by C-section. “The next day I felt as if I had been run down by two tractor trailers,” Joy adds.
The proud mum says her daughter is “doing well” and is being monitored in the neonatal unit. “She is improving everyday,” Joy explains, adding: “I was most definitely shocked when I found out that she weighed 15.5lbs.”
She says she is also doing well, although she’s still quite sore.
Harper is the latest in a string of good news for Joy and her husband, who were told years ago that they had a 15% chance of conceiving a child.
After seven years spent trying to get pregnant, the couple had given up hope and decided to adopt, local news site WETM reported.
It was then, in May 2016, that Joy found out she was expecting – and she gave birth to a baby boy weighing 11lbs.
Less than two years later she became pregnant again and gave birth, this time to baby Harper. Joy told other couples experiencing fertility problems: “Don’t give up.”