Baby Boom: Texas hospitals try to keep up with birthrate

SAN ANTONIO — Every three minutes, a child is born somewhere in Texas.

At one hospital in North Texas, 107 babies were delivered over 96 hours this summer, shattering local records. At a hospital in San Antonio, more than 1,200 babies have been born this year, up nearly 30% since 2018.

Across one of the nation’s fastest-growing states, an average 1,000 new Texans arrive every day. Half of them are newborns.

“Our population is going up. So just with that, I would expect our birthrates to increase,” said Shad Deering, a department chair with the Children’s Hospital of San Antonio. “We will become very busy.”

Across the state, a baby boom has been fueled by newcomers from states like California and New York, attracted by a lower cost of living, less crowded schools and cheaper taxes. Many of them are starting their own families in the process, experts said.

“We have a higher proportion of population in the reproductive years,” said Lloyd Potter, a state demographer and professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Between 2010 and 2020, the state’s population grew by 4 million — or the entire population of neighboring Oklahoma. Babies made up the largest number of new arrivals to Texas (about 48%), with migrants from other states (31%) and countries (21%) rounding out the rest.

And hospitals are trying to keep up.

“It has not slowed down,” said Michelle Stemley, vice president of patient care at Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center in Fort Worth, which broke its four-day delivery record this summer.

The surge in births comes amid a declining birthrate nationwide. Couples have waited longer to have children, a trend that continued during the coronavirus pandemic and an uncertain economy, Potter said.

But a spike in sales of pregnancy tests — a 13% increase since June of last year — may signal that a so-called millennial baby boom may be on the horizon, according to Nielsen’s data and Bank of America’s research.