Boy, what a baby

At 14 pounds and 2 ounces, he's believed to be the heaviest baby ever born in Orange County.

LAGUNA HILLS – It took two doctors to lift the baby up during the C-section.

The gasps in the delivery came quickly. "Oh my God!" a nurse said. For a second, mother Sara Sault thought something might be wrong.  Nope.   "He's here! He's big!" someone else said.

Got that right.  Father Richard Sault whispered the details in his wife's ear:  "Fourteen pounds, 2 ounces." Just seconds after his birth, Richard Walker Sault — 21½ inches long — already had outgrown his infant car seat.  He weighed as much as a medium-sized holiday turkey — fitting for a kid born on Dec. 23.

"We thought our first baby was a miracle, and now we have this little guy," said Richard Sault, immediately correcting himself. "Guess he's not so little." 

Richard Sault Jr. is the largest baby ever delivered at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills — most likely in Orange County, according to veteran Saddleback doctors and an informal check of other major county hospitals.  Labor and delivery nurses at UCI Medical Center in Orange can't recall a baby ever being born there weighing more than 13 pounds.  "That's a big baby," said Marty Wright, department manager of labor and delivery at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange. During her 21 years at the hospital, about 102,000 babies have been delivered.

"I remember one that was nearly 12 pounds, but 14.2? Never!" she said. So, for now, the crown belongs to Little Richard — who's large enough to make the honor roll globally, too.  A newborn in Brazil weighing 17 pounds made headlines in 2005, while one in China caused a stir at 13.75 pounds — the largest ever born there.

The oldest surviving baby weighed 22.5 pounds, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

TIGHT FIT
Richard Jr. barely was able to squeeze into the largest diapers on the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Saddleback Memorial, where he was in good health but remained for observation Friday.

His parents, who may be able to take him home Saturday, have an immediate date with the mall — not to buy Christmas gifts, but to return clothes that already are too small for him.

"The largest we got were for babies three to six months," Richard Sault said. "We need to get him clothes for 6- to 9-month-olds." Richard Jr. is the size of an average 6-month-old, said Dr. Ronald Naglie, a neonatologist at Saddleback Memorial. Most babies double their birth weight in the first five to six months, and the average baby weighs about 7 pounds at birth, he explained. "He's certainly the biggest newborn I've encountered," said Naglie, who's been around newborns for nearly 30 years.

The Saults were expecting a large baby, but not thislarge. Based on ultrasounds, doctors figured he would weigh 11 pounds. Richard Jr.'s sister, Shantel, 3, weighed 10 pounds 12 ounces at birth. She was born four weeks premature.  Genetics play some role in a newborn's size, Naglie said.  Richard Sault is 5 feet 10 inches and weighs around 240; Sara Sault is 5 feet 8 inches with a normal weight of 170.

There are other factors, Naglie said.Sara Sault developed diabetes while pregnant, which can make a baby larger because of their high blood sugar. Once born, such babies often have low blood sugar and have to be monitored until they stop overproducing insulin. Richard Jr. needed to take some sugar intravenously and also needed extra oxygen pumped in through a nose tube to remedy a mild case of respiratory distress syndrome — not uncommon for babies born to diabetic mothers, Naglie said.

The Saults, who three years ago moved to Morongo Valley from Laguna Hills, are thrilled their baby is healthy, and proud he's in the record books. After all, they never expected to even have kids. Several years ago, while living in the Toronto area in their native Canada, a physician told Sara she would never be able to carry a child.

The couple, who have been together for 10 years, tried fertility drugs. Nothing worked. Work brought Richard Sault, an iron worker, to Orange County in 2004. A year later, his wife, while training to take a physical test to become a police officer, learned she was pregnant. Shantel was born in August 2005.  Last year, Sara Sault resumed her training to become a cop when she learned that she was pregnant again. "I was jogging and eating right, and about two months into training, when I found out," she said, smiling. "I was really surprised."

Lugging around what became a 14-pound, 2-ounce baby took a toll. Her back hurt a lot as she gained about 100 pounds during her pregnancy. "I can't believe you were holding him in your belly," Angie Neal, an RN on Saddleback Memorial's NICU, told Sara Sault during a feeding Friday.

Baby Richard has been eating up to four ounces of formula every three hours. An average newborn will drink a little more than that amount in an entire day. Sara Sault held her son up after his feeding.  "Come on," she said. "You can do." And he did.

As newborn burps go, well, it was a big one.

Contact the writer: 949-454-7356 or ghardesty@ocregister.com