Axel LaVerne Dolton, 15 lbs, 6 oz.
Axel LaVerne Dolton, 15 lbs, 6 oz.
Axel LaVerne Dolton, 15 lbs, 6 oz.
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Some numbers are just too big to register. It was like that when Wendi Dolton heard a doctor say the number '15.6' moments after giving birth to her third child on Monday. She thought at first he was referring to the time.
"And he goes, 'weight.'
"And I said, 'wait for what?'"
"And he goes, 'no, the weight."
Wendi's next response: "Are you kidding me?"
No kidding. Wendi had given birth to a baby boy weighing 15 pounds, 6 ounces.
"There's been doctors and nurses that have been around here a fair amount of years and they've never seen one that big," says Mike Dolton, Wendi's husband.
The Racine, Minnesota parents named their baby boy Axel LaVerne.
"I had some clothes ready for him, and yes, he's outgrown them already," says Wendi. "And my family bought clothes and they won't fit him."
For now Axel is in neonatal intensive care at St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester. His parents say he's being monitored for a heart condition associated with premature birth. That's right. Alex arrived by Cesarean section, three weeks early.
Axel barely fit in a preemie isolette. "He lays up there by these little two pounders and one pounders and three pounders and here he takes up the whole cart," explains Wendi. "And they actually moved him to a bigger bed. He's a big boy, he's broad. He's going to be my little linebacker I think."
The Doltons say Axel is doing well and they hope to bring him home within a few days.
Wendi is used to big babies. Her first daughter Naomi, 9, weighed more than nine pounds at birth. Sister Emma, 6, weighed more than 11 pounds, earning her the nickname "Pork Chop."
The Dolton's Thanksgiving baby now has a nickname too. "Butterball, yep, our butterball," laughs his mom. "Big cheeks, big chubby cheeks and no neck."
A nine pound baby, followed by an eleven pound baby and now a 15 pound baby. Do we hear 20?
"We're done," say Axel's parents almost in unison. Adds Wendi for emphasis, "I'm not doing this again."
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