There was little knowledge of the birth process and no pre-natal care in those days so I imagine if anything went wrong the baby didn’t make it and the rate of deaths at or near birth was likely quite high. I wonder why those studying this find are so sure the infants were murdered? The scenerio of this being a brothel with babies murdered is possible but they may be jumping to that conclusion.
As the story notes:
Measurements of their bones show all the babies died at around 40 weeks gestation, suggesting very soon after birth. If they had died from natural causes, they would have been different ages.