Fat chinese baby | Michelin baby | Chubby chinese baby

A Chinese baby has become so chubby he now weighs the same as a six-year-old child.

Ten-month-old Lei Lei has been nicknamed the ‘Michelin Baby’ after tipping the scales at a whopping 20kg (3.1 stones).

According to his mother, Cheng Qingyu, her son was a normal weight at birth, but thanks to his ravenous appetite he has steadily ballooned since.

Chubby chops: Lei Lei weighs 20lbs but can just about be lifted up by his mother Cheng Qingyu

Hungry: Lei Lei, who was a normal weight at birth, loves to eat


She said: ‘No matter whatever he grabs, he unconsciously puts it in his mouth.

‘His most favourite thing is to eat.’

Lei Lei is currently in hospital in Yiyang, southern China’s Hunan province, where he is undergoing tests to see if there is a medical reason behind his weight gain.

All smiles: Lei Lei is currrently being observed in hospital to see if there is a medical explanation for his size

He's a grower: The portly youngster plays contentedly in his cot

Baby stroller parade

These days they had a baby stroller parade in one of Russian cities in Volgograd. Some of those were pretty creative.

Baby born | With six perfectly formed and functional | Fingers and toes

A newborn baby in San Francisco has six perfectly formed and functional fingers and toes on his hands and feet. -Hang-

Transplant mother speaks of her "indescribable" joy after giving birth

Dozing peacefully in her mother's arms, this is four-day-old Maja Butscher, the first baby to be born as the result of a whole ovary transplant.

Maja, appropriately named after the Roman goddess of fertility, is a symbol of hope to millions of infertile women around the world who could benefit from the same pioneering procedure which enabled her mother Susanne to conceive naturally.

Mrs Butscher, 39, who went through an early menopause, fell pregnant a year after being given an ovary by her identical twin sister.

Recovering from the birth at the Portland Hospital in London, she said: "Being a mother at last is an indescribable feeling. It's been hard to take my eyes off her since she was born.

"I'm so lucky to have had this wonderful opportunity which has given me a sense of completeness I would never have had otherwise.

"Being the first woman in the world to give birth after a whole ovary transplant hasn't sunk in yet, but I'm just so grateful to the doctors who enabled this to happen and to my sister, of course.

"I'm happy to be sharing my story with the world to give other women hope who might have similar problems."

Doctors believe the pioneering transplant treatment which Mrs Butscher underwent in the US last year will not only benefit women who suffer an early menopause, but could also help women who undergo chemotherapy or radiotherapy for cancer and who could freeze one of their ovaries before beginning treatment.

Mrs Butscher, whose primary reason for the transplant was to halt the advance of osteoporosis which she was suffering as a result of her early menopause, began ovulating naturally for the first time in her life after receiving the ovary from her sister Dorothee.

She said she feared her transplanted ovary had failed when she missed her period eight months ago.

"It was a little bit worrying, but something inside me told me this was different," she said. "For the first time in my life, I went out and bought a pregnancy testing kit. When it showed up positive, I couldn't believe it, so I went out and bought another one to check."

Mrs Butscher, who is originally from Hamburg but has lived in London for the past six years with her husband Stephan, who is also German, said: "Ever since I found out I was pregnant it has been a magical journey.

"At the same time I was super-nervous. Every time we went over a bump or pothole in the road I was worried."

After a straightforward pregnancy, baby Maja Charlotte Shasa Butscher, whose third name means "precious water", was born by elective caesarean at 2.42 on Tuesday afternoon, weighing 7lbs 15oz.

Doctors at the Portland decided to perform a caesarean because Mrs Butscher had reached full term with no signs that she was about to go into labour.

"When I saw her for the first time I just cried," said Mrs Butscher. "You can't really put into words that feeling when you see your daughter for the first time. I heard her scream first, as she was delivered, and then I saw her. She really is a little miracle."

Mr Butscher, 40, said: "I don't think anyone has invented the right words to describe what it feels like to become a father."

Mrs Butscher, an acupuncturist and complementary therapist, was diagnosed as being infertile 12 years ago following years of tests on her ovaries and hormone levels.

She said: "I never had periods when I was younger, whereas my twin sister had regular periods. I was very slim and the doctors said that when I put weight on my periods would start.

"No-one realised at the time that my ovaries weren't working, they just said my hormone levels weren't normal, so I was put on the Pill to compensate.

"I had all sorts of blood tests, genetic tests, DNA tests, but it wasn't until we moved to Boston in America in 1996 that I was diagnosed with premature ovary failure.

"I was also told I had osteoporosis and that it would be very, very difficult for me to have children. It was hard to take on board."

Mrs Butscher and her husband Stephan, whom she had married that year, discussed the possibilities of egg donation and adoption, but, said Mrs Butscher: "We decided in the end we wouldn't go for any of this. We had a very full life and we were happy. We came to terms with the fact that we wouldn't have children."

Mr Butscher, a management consultant, said: "It was just part of what we were. It was never a massive issue because we had happy lives."

Mrs Butscher was put on hormone replacement therapy but was concerned about the long-term side-effects and began to look for other ways of treating her osteoporosis.

Her gynaecologist suggested she should contact Dr Sherman Silber, who had carried out pioneering ovary transplant procedures at the Infertility Centre of St Louis in Missouri. He suggested she might be a suitable candidate for a whole ovary transplant if her twin sister could be the donor.

"I wanted to make sure it wouldn't harm my sister, because it's such a big thing for someone to donate an organ," said Mrs Butscher. "She said she was happy to go along with it if it was what I wanted.

"At the time my primary concern was to treat my osteoporosis, but at the back of my mind it was also about fertility, even though I had been told so many times I couldn't have children. Dr Silber said it was possible I might start to ovulate, and that was what happened."

Mrs Butscher received her sister's right ovary in a four-and-a-half-hour operation in January 2007.

"It was really emotional because I'm very, very close to my sister and I knew I was the one putting her through this, so it was difficult from a physical point of view and from an emotional one," she said.

"After the surgery there was this tiny flame of hope that I might have a child, but it was difficult trying to balance hope with realistic expectations."

The moment Mrs Butscher had never dared hope for came 13 months after her operation, with confirmation that she was pregnant.

She said: "My husband was away at a conference in Dubai at the time and I didn't want to tell him until I was sure, so I said nothing when I spoke to him that evening and it was only the next day, after it was confirmed by my doctor, that I told him he was going to be a father."

Stephan Butscher said: "I was standing on a platform just about to make a speech in front of 50 people when Susanne rang me and said: 'I have to tell you something.'

"She asked me if I was sitting down, then said 'I'm pregnant.' It was the most fantastic news, and it was difficult to keep the grin off my face as I made my presentation."

Mrs Butscher, who now hopes to have more children, said: "Maja has been absolutely fantastic, she is a good feeder and she sleeps really well. She's got her own personality and she loves to observe everything that's going on around her."

As for her status as a world first, Mr Butscher said of Maja: "She is very calm and relaxed about the whole thing. She's just such a good baby."

Babies have a sense of rhythm from early on in life

It will be months before they talk, walk or even sit up. But at just a day old, babies have a strong sense of rhythm, say researchers.

Newborns are also sensitive to pitch and melody, they found.

Experts said that introducing a child to music at an early age could enhance these innate musical abilities and also help them learn to talk.

The fledgling musical talent was discovered by Hungarian researchers during a study of more than 100 boys and girls who were only one or two days old.

They played the babies music as they slept and measured their brain activity.

The researchers found that their brains computed changes in beat, tone and melody.

For instance, if a key beat was missed from a rhythmic pattern, the baby's brain registered the change.

A change in pitch, similar to that between male and female voices, also provoked a reaction.

The Hungarian Academy of Sciences study was part of a threeyear European project on how the brain processes music and other sounds, co-ordinated by Dr Susan Denham, of Plymouth University.

She said: 'What is perhaps most significant is that not only do babies' brains register changes in beat, pitch and simple melodic patterns but they do so more or less automatically, as they are fast asleep during these experiments.

'People come into the world with brains that are wired-up to detect patterns'.

Dr Denham added: 'A lot of music reflects the rhythms and contents of speech. If you are listening to music you will also probably be more sensitive to speech rhythm.'

Baby born with a second penis

THIS is the picture that will shock parents around the world - a baby born with a second penis on his BACK.

The tot was born to farmer dad Li Jun, 30, and his unnamed wife, who live in Hejian city in central China's Henan province.

Surgery

But he was rushed to Tianjin Childrens' Hospital on May 27 for surgery to remove his extra manhood.

The rare condition, the first for Tianjin Childrens' Hospital, is called fetus in fetu (FIF).

Doctors, who spent over three hours removing the extra penis on June 6, said he was fine following surgery.

Girl with two faces

The family of an Indian girl born with two faces, who has been venerated as a "gift from God" by local villagers, will not consult doctors to see if their daughter needs to receive treatment or corrective surgery.

The baby, who is yet to be named, was born to a labourer, Vinod Kumar, and his wife, Sushma, nearly four weeks ago in a village 35 miles outside Delhi. Since her arrival, the family home has drawn hundreds of visitors. "People have come in trucks and have been queuing at our doorstep," said the Mr Kumar, 24.

The reason for the crowds is the child's appearance: she has two pairs of eyes, two noses and two lips but only one pair of ears.

The child's 19-year-old mother, says that she has "accepted the way she is and so will the rest of the world. Why should [I regret], after all God formed her features and it is he who decided how she should be."

The family, who are poor and largely illiterate, do not believe modern science can help their child and are already building a small temple to the girl in the village.

Kumar said that when his daughter was born, hospital staff told the family that everything was normal. "So where's the need to get medical help? She's feeds through one mouth and sucks her thumb with the other. She's just a baby."

Doctors predict a difficult life ahead for the girl, who was born without any pre-natal care. They said it was an extremely rare case, with the baby having two skulls joined together, and that separating them was out of the question.

"The chances of survival are not very bright in such cases," Mukul Verma, a neurologist at the Apollo hospital, Delhi. "It is a developmental defect where two different things have been partially formed. It would require plastic surgery to try and remove one face. But then that all depends on how the brain is placed, as also the food and windpipes."

World Smallest Baby

world's youngest mother 5-year-old peruvian

Into the hospital at Pisco (Peru) came a tired, ragged Indian woman from the foothills of the Andes. She led by the hand a shy little girl, scarcely three feet tall, with chestnut braids and an enormously bulging abdomen. Pointing to the frightened child, the Indian woman begged Surgeon Geraldo Lozada to exorcise the evil spirits which had taken possession of her. Certain that little Lina Medina had an abdominal tumor, Dr. Lozada examined her, received the surprise of his life when he discovered she was eight months pregnant.

Dr. Lozada took her to Lima, the capital of Peru, prior to the surgery to have other specialists confirm that Lina was in fact pregnant. A month and a half later, on May 14, 1939, she gave birth to a boy by a caesarean section necessitated by her small pelvis. The surgery was performed by Dr. Lozada and Dr. Busalleu, with Dr. Colretta providing anaesthesia. Her case was reported in detail by Dr. Edmundo Escomel to La Presse Medicale, along with the additional details that her menarche had occurred at 8 months of age, and that she had had prominent breast development by the age of 4. By age 5 her figure displayed pelvic widening and advanced bone maturation.


Her son weighed 2.7 kg (6 lb) at birth and was named Gerardo after her doctor. Gerardo was raised believing that Lina was his sister, but found out at the age of ten that she was his mother. He grew up healthy but died in 1979 at the age of 40 of a disease of the bone marrow.

There was never evidence that Lina Medina's pregnancy occurred in any but the usual way, but she never revealed the father of the child, nor the circumstances of her impregnation. Dr. Escomel suggested she might not actually know herself by writing that Lina "couldn't give precise responses." Lina's father was arrested on suspicion of rape and incest, but was later released due to lack of evidence. Medina later married Raúl Jurado, who fathered her second son in 1972. They live in a poor district of Lima known as Chicago Chico ("Little Chicago"). She refused an interview with Reuters in 2002.

There are two published photographs documenting the case. The first one was taken around the beginning of April, 1939, when Medina was seven and a half months into pregnancy. Taken from Medina's left side, it shows her standing naked in front of an inconclusive backdrop (either the side wall of a house with the sun shining on her, or a light-diffusing blanket in a room with an overhead light pointed toward the front of her body). This is the only published photograph of Lina taken during her pregnancy. This photograph is of significant value because it proves Medina's pregnancy as well as the extent of her physiological development. However, this photograph is not widely known outside medical circles. The other photograph is of far greater clarity and was taken a year later in Lima when Gerardo was eleven months old.

Although the case was called a hoax by some, a number of doctors over the years have verified it based on biopsies, X rays of the fetal skeleton in utero, and photographs taken by the doctors caring for her. Extreme degrees of precocious puberty in children under 5 are very uncommon but not unheard of. Pregnancy and delivery by a child this young remains extremely rare because extremely precocious puberty is treated to suppress fertility, preserve growth potential, and reduce the social consequences of full sexual development in childhood, and because termination of such pregnancy is more widely available now than in the early 20th century.

Motherhood: Other amazing cases

Bobbie McCaughey is the mother who holds the record for the most surviving children from a single birth. She gave birth to the first set of surviving septuplets - 4 boys and 3 girls on November 19, 1997, at the University Hospital, Iowa, US. Conceived by in vitro fertilization, the babies were delivered after 31 weeks by caesarean in the space of 16 minutes. The babies are named Kenneth, Nathaniel, Brandon, Joel, Kelsey, Natalie and Alexis.

Jayne Bleackley is the mother who holds the record for the shortest interval between two children born in separate pregnancies. She gave birth to Joseph Robert on September 3, 1999, and Annie Jessica Joyce on March 30, 2000. The babies were born 208 days apart.

Elizabeth Ann Buttle is the mother who holds the record for the longest interval between the birth of two children. She gave birth to Belinda on May 19,1956 and Joseph on November 20, 1997. The babies were born 41 years 185 days apart. The mother was 60 years old when her son Joseph was born.

The highest officially recorded number of children born to one Russian mother is 69. Between 1725 and 1765, in a total of 27 pregnancies, she gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets. 67 of them survived infancy.

The modern world record for giving birth is held by Leontina Albina from San Antonio, Chile. Leontina claims to be the mother of 64 children, of which only 55 of them are documented. She is listed in the 1999 Guinness World Records but dropped from later editions.