Americans shared a collective jaw drop when JaMichael Brown of Longview, Texas, came into the world last summer weighing a whopping 16 pounds.

His father, Michael Brown, told Local 2, "When they put him in my hands, my arms dropped."

Only slightly leaner, Asher Stewardson made a hard landing at a Des Moines, Iowa, hospital in late January.

Mom Kendall Stewardson said, "When they put him on the scale, we were very surprised!"

Asher was 13 pounds, 12 ounces at birth. No epidural. No C-section.

Dr. Jaggi Khairah with Kelsey-Seybold Fort Bend Clinic told Local 2, "I think it's a blessing that they had the child the way they did, but it's a blessing. They were lucky."

Khairah said while some consider fat babies happy and healthy, the reality is quite the opposite.

"When these babies are born, they're at greater risk for birth injury, neurological damage, birth trauma to the mother," he said. "As they progress in their life, they're more likely to be obese, more likely to be diabetics themselves as they get older."

Average birth weight is 7 pounds. Anything over 8 1/2 pounds is considered large.

Khairah continued, "Nationally, they say about 4.5 percent of babies born out there would fall in that category. In Houston, we're almost double that. As time goes on, we're going to see larger and larger babies being born."

The most common cause of large birth weight babies is diabetes in the mother.

Khairah said prenatal care is critical for screening for diabetes and other risk factors, making sure moms aren't eating for two, taking in only about 200 to 400 more calories a day.

He explained, "They should treat pregnancy like it's one of the biggest things they've ever trained for in their lives."

Doctors use fetal ultrasound to estimate how much your baby will weigh. Even then, there's still a 15 to 20 percent error rate.

The Des Moines baby was born naturally, but many doctors will recommend babies over 10 pounds be born via C-section.