14 DAY TRIAL // Young Juanita Valentina Hernandez, now living with her family in the town of Líbano in Colombia, has not yet celebrated her first birthday. Still, she weighs about as much as an average 5-year-old.
Long story short, this 10-month-old baby girl tips the scale at a whopping 20 kilograms (44 pounds). Just to put things into perspective, it must be said that the normal weight for kids her age is 8-9 kilograms (18-20 pounds).
What this means is that, despite being very young, Juanita Valentina Hernandez is morbidly obese. Specialists say that, because of all the extra weight pressing on her bones and organs, she risks developing all sorts of health complications.
Her mother has no idea how she got this big
The 10-month-old baby's mother, named Sandra Franco, says that, when she was born, her daughter weighed just 3 kilograms (a little over 6 pounds). Otherwise put, she was neither too plump nor too thin. She was just perfect.
The woman goes on to detail that, a couple of weeks after delivery, Juanita Valentina Hernandez was quite chubby. Fast forward a few month, and as proven by the photos in the gallery below, the girl now packs enough weight to quality as morbidly obese.
“When she was fifteen days old she was already looking chubby, because she was born very thin. Since then she’s been gaining weight Now she is ten months old and I have realized that she has morbid obesity,” Sandra Franco said in a statement, as cited by Metro.
Despite the fact that it is her job to look after the baby day and night, the woman insists that she has no idea how and why her infant daughter ended up weighing as much as a 5-year-old.
Doctors are doing their best to help the baby lose weight
For about a month now, Juanita Valentina Hernandez has been undergoing treatment at an obesity clinic in Bogotá, Colombia's capital city. Specialists here have not yet figured out why she got fat, but they are doing their best to help her get back in shape.
They say that, unless she loses weight and does so as fast as possible, the child risks developing type 2 diabetes by the time she turns 3 or 4. Should this happen, she will surely have to struggle with the medical complications of this condition for the rest of her life.
All things considered, it is possible that the child's rapid weight gain was the result of her suffering from a condition known as the Prader-Willi syndrome, which studies have shown to cause a permanent feeling of hunger. Then again, some other rare disorder might be to blame.
It is estimated that thousands of children living in Colombia are currently obese. True, it is possible that some of them put on weight because of a freak condition. Then again, the fact remains that unhealthy eating habits are the most common cause of obesity, be it in Colombia or some other country.
