Lompoc's New Heavyweight

Naomi Rainfeather Graham didn’t break the state’s birthweight record, but her arrival today at Lompoc Valley Medical Center: Hospital did cause some excitement. Naomi came squalling into the world at 12:29 pm weighing a significant 11 pounds, 14 ounces – or almost three pounds larger than OBGYN Dr. Rodney Huss, MD initially estimated she might weigh.

An average baby weighs about 8 pounds. California’s largest baby on record so far is the whopping 16 pound, 1-ounce Sammisano Joshua Talai Otuhiva, born August 2013 in Northern California. Dr. Huss said she was the heaviest baby he’s delivered in years.

Naomi was the biggest of Lisa Alcasas’ five children, the exhausted mother said about an hour after the natural birth. The delivery went well, she said, though it “was a little bit of a struggle.”

“I was very surprised,” Lisa said. “She looks great. She looks like her dad.”

Naomi joins three sisters and a brother on her mother’s side, and two brothers on father Bryan Graham’s side. Lisa said her other children – the eldest is now 20 – weighed 7 pounds, 5 ounces; 7 pounds, 11 ounces; 5 pounds, 15 ounces and 10 pounds, 3 ounces.

“If she (Lisa) had waited two more weeks, the baby would have walked out,” laughed maternal grandmother Mary Becerra-Alcasas.

The “little” newborn is named after her maternal aunt, Naomi Alcasas Castanon, who died last September as a result of breast cancer at the age of 35.