Featured Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Topics: World News
Jess Hardiman
The youngest confirmed mother on record was a young girl from Peru, who gave birth when she was just five years old.
Lina Medina made history in 1939 when she gave birth to a baby boy by caesarean section, believed to be possible due to precocious – or early – puberty.
Having complained of stomach pains, her parents initially believed Medina had a large abdominal tumour and took her to hospital, where doctors revealed the swelling was, in fact, down to pregnancy.
Her 6lb son was born on 14 May that year, named Gerardo after Dr Gerado Lozada, the chief physician of the hospital in Pisco where her pregnancy was diagnosed.
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While the story sounds too horrific to be real, fact-checking website Snopes has previously confirmed it is very much true – explaining how her incredible tale was documented in reports by Edmundo Escomel, one of Peru’s preeminent physician-researchers of the period and a laureate of the prestigious French Academy of Sciences.
His final report was published in the 19 December 1939 issues of Presse Medicale, where he revealed how pathologists believed Medina had the ovaries of a fully mature woman. However, Edcomel argued that the reason behind her precocious fertility was not down to the ovaries themselves, but must have stemmed from what Snopes refers to as an ‘extraordinary hormonal disorder of pituitary origin’.
At the time, the story was also covered widely by press across the globe, with a report published in the Los Angeles Times on 16 May 1939 quoting Hipolito Larrabure, head of the maternity hospital, as saying Medina had withstood the operation in an excellent manner.
Larrabure said the case was ‘truly astounding’ and that that he hoped ‘some United States scientific foundation will send an investigator to Lima to observe the case and indicate the best manner of caring for the mother and child.’”
Authorities were never able to determine who had been the father of the child. According to Snopes, Medina’s father was temporarily jailed on suspicion of incest, but was released due to ‘lack of evidence’.
Obstetrician Jose Sandoval, an obstetrician who took an interest in Medina’s case and wrote a book about her in 2002, said she was a psychologically normal child and displayed no other unusual medical symptoms.
She apparently preferred playing with her dolls rather than her own child - who did not find out that his sister was actually his mother until he was 10 years old.
As of 2004, Medina was believed to reside with her husband in the 'Little Chicago' district of Lima, Peru, but has always remained private despite the worldwide media attention she has received over the years.
According to the NHS, precocious puberty – or early puberty – is when girls show signs of puberty before the age of eight, or when boys show signs before nine.
“Some girls and boys may develop certain signs of puberty at a young age, but not others,” the NHS website explains.
“For example, girls may start periods before the age of eight but have no breast development.”
It is not always clear what causes precocious puberty, which may just be a ‘tendency’ that runs in the family. However, the NHS says it can sometimes be caused by: a problem in the brain, such as a tumour; damage to the brain as a result of an infection, surgery or radiotherapy; a problem with the ovaries or thyroid gland; or a genetic disorder, such as McCune-Albright syndrome.