2012-10-15






Lina Medina, seven and a half months into pregnancy

Lina Medina (born September 27, 1933, in Ticrapo, Huancavelica Region, Peru) is theyoungest confirmed mother in medical history, giving birth at the age of five years, seven months and 17 days. She currently lives in Lima, the capital of Peru.

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, before the surgery to have other specialists confirm that Medina was pregnant.

A month and a half after the original diagnosis, on May 14, 1939, Medina gave birth to a boy by a caesarean section necessitated by her small pelvis. The surgery was performed by Dr. Lozada and Dr. Busalleu, with Dr. Colareta providing anaesthesia. Her case was reported in detail by Dr. Edmundo Escomel in the medical journal La Presse Médicale, including the additional details that hermenarche 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[4] (or  according to a different article[1]). 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. When doctors performed the caesarean to deliver her baby, they found she already had fully mature sexual organs from precocious puberty.

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. He grew up healthy but died in 1979 at the age of 40 of abone marrow disease.

Medina has never revealed the father of the child nor the circumstances of her impregnation. Dr. Escomel suggested she might not actually know herself by writing that Medina "couldn't give precise responses"

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