A baby girl weighs 2st 10lbs due to her constant cravings for food – but is piling on even more pounds as the days go by.
Chahat Kumar, eight months, from Punjab, India, weighs a similar amount to that of a four-year-old. Her parents blame it on ‘God’ and her quadruple-sized portions of food, but they deny any responsibility over her diet.
Doctors are confused as to what is causing her insatiable appetite, and are growing increasingly worried about her health. She now struggles to breathe and even sleep as a result of her excessive weight caused by eating like a ’10-year-old’, local reports suggest.
Chahat also suffers from abnormally hard skin that makes taking her blood samples to analyse her condition more difficult. But the family lack the crucial funds needed to travel further afield to get advanced medical treatment.
She started to put on an excessive amount of weight when she turned four months old, despite being born normal-sized.
Her father, Suraj Kumar, 23, said: ‘When Chahat was born, she was completely normal. Then, slowly we saw that her weight was shooting up. Her weight is increasing day by day. It’s not our fault. God gave this condition to her. It’s not in our hands. I feel bad when some people laugh at her for being fat.’
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Chahat’s mother Reena, 21, is worried about her daughter’s health after she lost her first baby in childbirth.
She explained: ‘Before Chahat, we had a son who died, and then Chahat was born. I am concerned about her health. She doesn’t eat like a normal kid. She keeps eating all the time. If we don’t give her anything to eat, she starts crying. She cries to go out but her weight is too much and we are not able to pick her up. So we only take her to nearby places.’
The family doctor, Vasudev Sharma, confirmed that the difficulty with taking blood samples has made a medical diagnosis very difficult.
He said: ‘This is the first case I’ve seen in my life where a child’s weight has been shooting up so much four to five months after birth.
‘But the blood test couldn’t be carried out because the fat on the baby’s body was too much, and because of that, the blood test wasn’t done properly. We have tried it many times. Her skin is so hard that we can’t ever diagnose her condition.’
Dr Sharma has recommended the family visit a specialist at the Civil Hospital in Amritsar, but the family’s financial restraints has so far made this impossible. But Dr Sharma is certain that Chahat’s growing size needs to be addressed. He said: ‘Her weight is increasing excessively and it has to be controlled. She has to eat less. She eats like a 10-year-old kid.’
And while the family continue to search for answers, Reena dreams of her daughter having a brighter, lighter future.
She said: ‘We want Chahat to be able to play like normal kids. We don’t want her to have difficulties in the future. We want a good future for her.’
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