SMALLEST BABY

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 April 1927, Page 5

SMALLEST BABY

AUCKLAND’S SIX-OUNCE ENTRY NOW WELL-GROWN (Special to "Star.") AUCKLAND, April 14. The world’s record for a lightweight baby, 21b £oz., which was claimed on behalf of an English infant, was promptly shattered by the information that a proud Auckland mother had a girl who had a girl who weighed but lib 15ozs. at birth, the child now being ten months of age lOlbs weight and thriving amazingly well at the Karitane Home.

“I claim to go one‘better,” writes a correspondent. “A baby girl born at Ngaruawahia weighed one and a half pounds, and to balance the weight it was necessary to put a packet of hairpins and two safety pins along with the baby. As a matter of fact its weight was just under one and ahalf pounds.” The correspondent says that the baby lived and he has sent to the “Star” the names of two medical men who attended the infant.

Now comes another claim for the record as far as Auckland is concerned. A little girl who is at present ten years of age, well grown and of average height, at the time of her birth, which took place at the Auckland hospital, she weighed but 6 ounces. From inquiries that have been made it was learned that the infant’s weight was a matter of general surprise at the time, although nothing in the nature of a record was claimed, seeing that America, usually the place for big things could boast a healthy infant that turned the scales at 5 ounces, and it, is generally believed that this is still the world’s record for children.

Apparently the 21b child, or thereabouts, is more common than most people imagine. There is a Ponsonby mother, with a girl now 12 years of age, who after her birth weighed a neat 21b, clothes included, and was 12 inches in length, to-day the girl has good health and is in the fourth standard at school. MINIATURE MARTHA. (Per Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, April 13. London’s claim to the smallest baby is easily beaten by Maitahi, North Auckland, near Dargaville. The baby was Martha MacGinty. She was born in Auckland Hospital ward on the 7th June, 1912, at the weight of fourteen and a-half ounces. The nurse who cared for the baby is now on the staff of an Ashburton Hospital. She fed the baby, she relates, not with a canary feather, but with an eye dropper.