Birth weight puts him among largest infants born in the world
When Loialty Adonis Grover arrived on Dec. 6, his mother was stunned to learn he weighed 14.1 pounds.
In the last months of LaQueena Marie Hunter-Grover’s pregnancy, her husband, Leroy, kept telling her that something wasn’t right, and friends suggested she was too big to be having one child. When she peaked at 300 pounds, she had to ride the cart at the store to get around, and had to move from side to side at night to get any sleep.
All this because the couple decided they wanted to try to have another child. Twelve years after having three boys, they wanted a girl.
“We ended up getting a big ole surprise that wasn’t a girl,” she said of Loialty (pronounced Loyalty).
Loialty is one of the biggest babies ever born in Louisiana. The current record holder is Herman Johnson, who weighed nearly 16 pounds when he was born in 1985. Johnson famously went on to play college football at LSU, weighing in at 6-foot, 7 ounces, and 389 pounds during his playing days.Though not quite as big as Johnson at birth, Loialty still ranks as one of the largest babies born in the world.
Thirty-seven days after his birth, Loialty already weighs more than 15 pounds.
A typical newborn weighs 7 pounds, 5 ounces.
Though Loialty spent more than 20 days in the hospital after birth due to high sugar levels, Hunter-Grover said her son is healthy.
“He had a really bumpy two weeks, but his is perfect now,” Hunter-Grover said.
In fact, the baby has slept through his fame.
“He’s big enough that he looks like a small toddler,” Hunter-Grover said. “He cries like a newborn. He sleeps like a newborn.”
But he dresses like a three- to six-month old and wears a size 3 Pampers’ diaper.
“I was really, really shocked,” Hunter-Grover said. “I would have never thought he would be that big.”
It was initially thought that the gestational diabetes she had during the pregnancy lent to Loialty’s size, but his mother maintains that “big” just runs in both sides of the family.
Leroy is often asked if he’s a football player. Also, her grandmother’s seventh child weighed 14 pounds. She called her grandmother “the woman of the century” for surviving the pregnancy at a time of no epidurals or hospitals.
Loialty was born by c-section, and since his birth his mother’s weight has dropped to 240 pounds and continues falling.
“I asked my husband, ‘Am I that big?’” she said. “He said, ‘Yes, you’re that big.’”
Hunter-Grover has gotten calls from people as far away as New Zealand and Canada who just want to congratulate her on her “large bundle.”
But she also gotten some negative comments from some people saying they’ve seen bigger babies. Some questioned her having a child with diabetes, but gestational diabetes typically surfaces during a pregnancy and then levels off after the child is born, as it has in this case.
Hunter-Grover said the only reason they told the media about their child is simple.
“I haven’t gotten a dollar,” she said. “I just did it because I think he’s super cute and he needs to be acknowledged. It’s like phenomenal to have a child that big and to carry him 39 weeks.”
All she wants is for her child to finish college. However, she said a local coach has already advised her that he hopes he’s still coaching when Loialty’s ready to enter the game.
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