A Mexican girl, 10, gave birth to a premature baby boy weighing 3.3 pounds after she was admitted to Hospital de la Mujer in Puebla, 60 miles southeast of Mexico City, on October 22. The girl was suffering seizures and other medical problems. The infant was delivered by Caesarean section after only 31 weeks of pregnancy by surgeons.
The birth has been confirmed by officials from the hospital.
Rogelio Gonzalez, the hospital director, said that the child is in the neonatal intensive care unit while he recovers from pneumonia. The girl has been released from the hospital and returns each day to breastfeed the baby.
“[She] comes every day with her mother to breastfeed her son every four hours and she is recovering very well from her surgery,” Gonzalez said.
The girl is close to 11 and reportedly is from the San Francisco Totimehuacan area. The minimum age of consent in the state is 12 and abortion is illegal unless the woman was the victim of a sexual assault crime, according to Gonzalez. The state Attorney General’s Office for Puebla is investigating the pregnancy after being notified of the birth.
In August of 2010, an 11-year-old girl gave birth after being denied an abortion because she was in her fourth month of her pregnancy. She was allegedly raped by her stepfather.
On record, the youngest woman to give birth is that of Lina Media, who was five when she gave birth to a boy back in 1939. No father was positively identified. Gonzalez said that he has the best of expectations for the boy’s recovery in this most recent case.