They aren't America's heaviest newborn twins on record, but they certainly tip the scales: Sean William Maynard and Abigail Rose Maynard weighed in at a combined 23 pounds and 1 ounce at birth this week, a North Carolina hospital announced Friday. Freda Springs, spokeswoman for Forsyth Medical Center, said the twins were delivered two minutes apart by Caesarean section on Tuesday at the center's Sara Lee Center for Women's Health in Winston-Salem. The boy weighed 10 pounds, 14 ounces; the girl, 12 pounds, 3 ounces. Springs said both babies are in excellent condition after their birth to parents Joey and Erin Maynard of Winston-Salem.

The combined weight of the twins is about four pounds shy of the combined weight of twins born in Arkansas in 1927, the hospital said. Those twins weighed a total of 27 pounds, 12 ounces, hospital researchers said, adding they could find no public record of any heavier twins than the Arkansas pair born since 1900.

They said the Maynard twins topped a 1997 delivery in North Carolina of big twins weighing a total of 18 pounds, 10 ounces.

Sean, tucked in a blue blanket, was held by his mother and his sister, swaddled in pink, was cradled by her father at a hospital news conference Friday. The infants slept quietly through their first public appearance.