Medicine: Big Babies

Of every 100 babies born, one is likely to weigh ten pounds or more—big enough to cause obstetric difficulties unless the mother’s pelvis happens to be extra large. Doctors do not know why some babies are born big, but they are convinced that mothers cannot control the size of their offspring by going hungry. Heredity and other more obscure factors are probably involved.

For some reason, the more children a mother has already had, the more likely she is to bear a big baby. Dr. William Davis Hawker of St. Louis checked the weights and family rank of 8,890 children born at the St. Louis City Hospital over a five-year period. Of these, 102 (1.1%) weighed over 4,500 grams (9.9 pounds). The average baby in this heavyweight group was a fifth child, whereas the average for the whole was a third child.

In the Journal of the Missouri State Medical Association last week, Dr. Hawker noted that surgical interference was necessary twice as frequently for the 102 heavyweights (14.7%) as for the whole series (7.2%). The ratio of the common head presentation to the uncommon breech presentation was the same for the big babies as for the whole group, but three out of four of the hindside-first heavyweight babies were lost. Altogether eight of the big babies died before or during delivery. But among their mothers there were only two cases of hemorrhage after birth, and not one mother died.