With Thanksgiving just days away, everybody is excited to reunite with their family over a delicious home-cooked meal. The feeling of being too full to function while laughing (or sometimes fighting) with your family means you’ll be sinking into a post-feast nap and compartmentalizing all your new memories from the day, good and bad, depending on the family.

If you’re pregnant during this time, you may already be feeling a little too stuffed, with the extra pounds of weight weighing on you for months and only getting heavier. When the turkey comes out, you may think, “woof, imagine carrying that thing around for nine months.” And then you think, “hmm… I wonder what the heaviest turkey ever was?” And then you think, with a rush of terror, “I wonder what the heaviest baby ever was.” Because no matter how big the turkey, you can get some extra hands on deck to carry that sucker to the table. But a baby is all on mama. So, what was the heaviest turkey? And, what was the heaviest baby?

Heaviest Turkey

While a standard male turkey usually clocks in around 16 - 24 pounds, the heaviest turkey ever recorded was a whopping 86 pounds!!! Now, this includes feathers and organs, but it is still very impressive. This monster bird, named Tyson, belonged to Philip Cook of Leacroft Turkeys Limited, won the annual heaviest turkey competition held in London in 1989, and was auctioned off to charity for $6,692. Since Thanksgiving is not celebrated in England, it is unclear whether Tyson ended up on a table or was granted a life of freedom. 

What do you think? Could your dinner table sustain his mass? Or would it buckle under the pressure?

Heaviest Baby

Though it might not be 86 pounds, the heaviest baby ever recorded at birth weighed in at 22 pounds! Unfortunately, this baby boy died just 11 hours after birth and was born to Giantess Anna Bates on January 19, 1879. Reportedly, when Anna’s water broke, she lost six gallons of fluid. The baby's father, Martin van Buren Bates, said that he was as large as a healthy six-month-old baby. Imagine carrying that around in the last few months of pregnancy! So, would you rather carry a 22-pound newborn or an 86-pound turkey?

Hopefully, your Thanksgiving is free of monstrously sized turkeys and babies so that everyone can focus on togetherness and good food. And if for some reason it’s not, and there are both a giant turkey and giant baby present, well, then you’ll have a lot more to gossip about!