RANDOM FACT #15 - LINA MEDINA is the YOUNGEST CONFIRMED MOTHER in History

Born in Ticrapo, Peru to silversmith Tiburelo Medina and Victoria Losea, Medina was brought to a hospital by her parents at the age of five years due to increasing abdominal size. She was originally thought to have had a tumor, but her doctors determined she was in her seventh month of pregnancy. Dr. Gerardo Lozada took her to Lima, Peru, to have other specialists confirm that Medina was pregnant.

(L) Lina with her doctor and son. (R) Lina seven and a half months pregnant | Source

A month and a half after the original diagnosis, Medina, at the age of 5 years and 7 months, gave birth to a boy by a caesarean section on May 14, 1939, necessitated by her small pelvis, which made her the youngest known person in history to give birth. The surgery was performed by Lozada and Dr. Busalleu, with Dr. Colareta providing anaesthesia. When doctors performed the caesarean to deliver her baby, they found she already had fully mature sexual organs from precocious puberty - puberty occurring at an unusually early age.

Lina with her son Gerardo | Source

Her case was reported in detail by Dr. Edmundo Escomel in the medical journal La Presse Médicale, including the additional details that her first menstrual cycle had occurred at eight months of age, in contrast to a past report stating that she had been having regular periods since she was three years old (or 2½ according to a different article). The report also detailed that she had prominent breast development by the age of four. By age five, her figure displayed pelvic widening and advanced bone maturation.

Medina's son weighed 2.7 kg (6.0 lb; 0.43 st) at birth and was named Gerardo after her doctor. Gerardo was raised believing that Medina was his sister, but found out at the age of 10 that she was his mother.

Medina has never revealed the father of the child nor the circumstances of her impregnation. Escomel suggested she might not actually know herself by writing that Medina "couldn't give precise responses". Although Lina's father was arrested on suspicion of child sexual abuse, he was later released due to lack of evidence, and the biological father who impregnated Lina was never identified. Medina's son grew up healthy and died in 1979 at the age of 40.

Lina with her son | Source

In young adulthood, Medina worked as a secretary in the Lima clinic of Lozada, who gave her an education and helped put her son through high school. Medina later married Raúl Jurado, who fathered her second son in 1972. As of 2002, they lived in a poor district of Lima known as "Chicago Chico" ("Little Chicago"). She refused an interview with Reuters that year, just as she had turned away many reporters in years past.

Although the case was speculated as a hoax, a number of doctors over the years have verified it based on biopsies, X rays of the fetal skeleton in utero, and photographs taken by the doctors caring for her.

Lina as an adult - 28 years later | Source

There are two published photographs documenting the case. The first was taken around the beginning of April 1939, when Medina was seven-and-a-half months into pregnancy. Taken from Medina's left side, it shows her standing naked in front of a neutral backdrop.

This is the only published photograph of Lina taken during her pregnancy. The other photograph is of far greater clarity and was taken a year later in Lima when Gerardo was eleven months old.

In 1955, except for the effects of precocious puberty, there was no explanation of how a five-year-old girl could conceive a child.

Extreme precocious puberty in children aged five or under has only been documented with Medina. It is treated by suppressing fertility, which preserves growth potential and reduces the social consequences of full sexual development in childhood.

Source