Childbearing Prior to Recognition of Diabetes: Recollected Birth Weights and Stillbirth Rate in Babies Born to Parents Who Developed Diabetes

Abstract

Of 2,348 children born to women who later developed diabetes, 12.6 per cent had a recollected birth weight exceeding 10 lb. (4.5 kg.), compared with 5 per cent of a control group. The proportion of these heavy babies did not increase, as the diagnosis approached and was as great forty to sixty as zero to twenty years betore the diabetes was recognized. It was the same in each birth rank. Men show no increased tendency to beget very large babies before the onset of diabetes. The stillbirth rate in the five years preceding the diagnosis of diabetes was 13.8 per cent but before that period was not in excess of that in the general population.