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Growing city, packed maternity wards: LHSC sets baby record in 2022

London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) delivered a record number of newborns in 2022 — breaking a mark set for its facility only a year earlier.

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A London hospital has delivered a record number of babies for the second straight year – a direct result of the city’s ongoing immigration boom, one expert says.

A total of 6,139 babies were born last year at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC), officials reported Tuesday. That’s up three per cent compared to 2021, when its medical teams delivered what was then a record-setting 5,964 babies.

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It’s a “milestone,” as hospital officials call it, but one that makes sense given how the city’s overall population has changed, says Don Kerr, a demographer at Western University’s King’s University College.

“We received a lot of migrants in 2022 so, immediately, the number of people available to give birth increases,” Kerr said, “so because our city is growing, you’d expect there to be more births overall.”

Between 2016 and 2021, the London metropolitan area, which includes St. Thomas and parts of Middlesex and Elgin counties, was the fastest-growing region in Ontario, growing by about 10 per cent over that period, according to the latest census.

That growth, bolstered in a big way by international migration and people moving to London from other parts of the province, continued last year, when the city grew by three per cent between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022, Statistics Canada figures show.

Kerr said the birth figures may also be boosted by more families feeling comfortable about having children after many held up those plans at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

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Though Kerr called the recent trend in births positive, it’s still nowhere near enough to keep London’s population growing.

For instance, London grew by approximately 16,800 people last year, according to Statistics Canada. Of all those new people, however, the city saw a net gain of only 422 people due to natural birth versus deaths.

“Women are still, in Canada and Ontario overall, not running off to have kids,” Kerr said. “Our total fertility rate, as a country and province, remains at near record lows. The biggest part of our growth is still migration from other parts of the province and international migration.”

London Health Sciences Centre officials say the majority of births in 2022, 69 per cent, involved London-based patients, officials said.

That was followed by 18 per cent from other parts of Southwestern Ontario, 11 per cent from Middlesex County and two per cent from elsewhere in the province.

According to the hospital, Thursdays were the busiest day for deliveries and the summer was the busiest season overall, with 1,615 babies born from June to August. In that period, July set the record for the busiest month with 561 births.

Of the more than 6,000 babies born locally last year, there were 160 sets of twins and seven sets of triplets, hospital officials said.

For 2023, as of early February, the hospital had delivered 613 babies, with officials expecting that volume to remain steady throughout the year.

jjuha@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/JuhaatLFPress

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