Signs of a baby boomlet in Phila. region

At the Mi Casita Day Care Center in Camden, the teachers just had to laugh.

In classroom after classroom, along a bright yellow hall hung with paintings and collages, the teachers realized that they, as well as many of the children's parents, almost perfectly matched new national trend data.

Most of the Hispanic women had three children - a higher-than-average birthrate that appears to be a key reason for what some demographers describe as a baby boomlet nationwide.

"Isn't that interesting?" said head teacher Jocelyn Villegas, who also has three children. (Nationally, the average is 2.1.) "The statistics say three, and it really seems to be true."

The government reports that the number of births in the United States in 2006 was the highest since 1961, as the baby boom was winding down.

Like the rest of the nation, the Philadelphia region appears to be undergoing its own birth blip. And like the rest of the nation, the region's increase is driven, at least in part, by high birthrates among Hispanic women.

But Philadelphia, as usual, has its own quirks.

Much of the spike in the number of births in the United States can be attributed to an increase in the overall population.

Many Philadelphia suburbs are growing fast, although the city has been losing residents for years, with the out-migration slowing to a trickle only recently.

Births in the city declined slightly during the 10-year period that ended in 2006, but jumped 2.6 percent from 2006 (22,088 births) to 2007 (22,680), according to Philadelphia's Department of Public Health. Nationally, the most recent data are for 2006, when births increased about 3 percent from the previous year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

The city's jump appeared to be fueled by a rise in Hispanic births - from about 2,500 in 1995 to 3,500 in 2005. Racial and ethnic breakdowns for more recent years were not available, although experts believe that the increase continued.

Throughout the region, increases in births among older and younger women - those 35 and older as well as age 24 and younger - also contributed to a baby boomlet.

In fact, the number of births among women over 35 increased nearly 22 percent in a decade, from 9,808 in 1997 to 11,960 in 2006, according to an Inquirer analysis of hospital billing data in the eight-county region. Births to women 25 to 34 years remained largely unchanged over the 10 years.

Overall, births throughout the region increased 6.2 percent over the decade, from 61,985 in 1997 to 65,825 in 2006.

Evidence of the boomlet is hard to miss at the Esperanza Health Center in the Port Richmond area of the city.

The center recently moved into an expanded pediatric clinic on the fifth floor of a building on Kensington Avenue. The clinic, which includes adult care on another floor, treats about 500 children a month on an annual budget of about $4 million. Ninety percent of the patients are Latino.

Six weeks into the new building, many of the newly painted cream-colored exam rooms are filled with babies.

Yesterday, pediatrician Tonya Arscott-Mills was making sure 3-month-old Elvis Cubero could breathe easily.

Elvis fussed and scrunched up his flush face as Arscott-Mills tugged up his shirt and placed the stethoscope on his belly.

Elvis' mother, Margerita Cubero, embodies two of the key trends that demographers cite for the increase in births: She is Hispanic (she was born in Puerto Rico but has lived in the mainland United States most of her life). And she's 38 years old and just had her first child.

She and her husband had been trying for years. "We were waiting and waiting, and he came to us late," Cubero said.

She said she would have only one child, because the city is too tough a place to raise children.

Across the hall was little Reina Lin. At 6 months old, she has many friends to play with at Spirit and Truth Fellowship Church in the Hunting Park section. Her mother, Shin, is a fourth-grade teacher at the church.

She had no trouble finding day care.

"Another teacher at the school just had a baby and stayed home to care for her, so she looks after Reina and another child," said Lin, who is 28.

Reina is her first child.

"I want to have one more and then maybe adopt two," she said.

There are four or five women pregnant at any one time at the church, she said.

"One woman has become the unofficial breast-feeding coach, there are so many new moms," she said.

Back at the Mi Casita day-care center across the river in Camden was Norma Espada. Her mother, in Puerto Rico, had 14 children.

And her? "I always said I was going to have three." Her older daughter has three as well.

Wanda Quides wanted more than three - except it's too expensive to raise them, she said. Had she stayed in Puerto Rico, she would have had more.

Dennis Acevedo had thought maybe two, but his wife said, "I want one more."

On the flip side, Francisca Martinez might have stopped at two, but her husband wanted a boy. (Now they have three girls.)

Why is another question - tough to answer in some ways, easy in others.

Put simply: Fewer are too few. More are too many.

A baby represents love. And hope. And, for some, a new life.

Nabor Cruz, a construction worker, came to this region from Mexico, specifically to forge a better life for the family he knew he and his wife would start once they got here.

Now, they have six, ages 1 to 11.