Weight and Length at Birth of Infants of Diabetic Mothers

At birth, infants of diabetic women are held to be bigger, fatter and more oedematous than those born of normal mothers. This is indicated especially by the works of Fischer (1935) and White & Hunt (1943) in which the foetal age is noticed. Some of the babies are truly giant infants, but others may be small, and the majority of literature does not afford any clear impression of the weight distribution and relation of these babies. The matter is complicated by the limited empirical material and the praemature occurrence of most deliveries, in connection with the great natural variance of birth weights. The excessive weight of the infants has been attributed to the maternal hyperglycaemia, which entails an increased supply and foetal content of glucose. Hitherto, no one has succeeded in or even tried to demonstrate a correlation between the foetal glucose supply and the weight of the infant, difficult