Why does the ship in Dead Space carry babies?

So after watching a stream, a question came up about the babies in Dead Space 1. One of the enemies are the babies that crawl on all fours, on the walls and ceilings, and have 3 tentacles that fire barbs at you. In Dead Space 2, these come from care facilities in the city, and in 3 they are dog corpses. But in 1, they are babies.

Basically, there is a section of the ship dedicated to maintaining the babies in stasis, for some reason. Is that ever explained? Is there any (in-game or canon) explanation as to why the Ishimura (a mining vessel in deep space) has a large collection of babies on board?