Lina Marcela Medina de Jurado is a Peruvian woman who became the youngest confirmed mother in history, giving birth at age five years, seven months, and 21 days. Based on the medical assessments of her pregnancy, she was less than five years old when she became pregnant. She is also believed to be the youngest documented case of precocious puberty.
Early life and development
Lina Medina was born in Ticrapo, Castrovirreyna Province, Peru, to parents Tiburelo Medina, a silversmith, and Victoria Losea. She was one of nine children. Her parents brought her to a hospital in Pisco at age five due to increasing abdominal size. Doctors originally thought that she had a tumor, but they then determined that she was in her seventh month of pregnancy. Dr Gerardo Lozada took her to Lima to have other specialists confirm that she was pregnant. Newspaper accounts indicate that interest in the case developed on many fronts. The San Antonio Light newspaper in Texas reported in its 16 July 1939 edition that a Peruvian obstetrician and midwife association had demanded that she be transported to a national maternity hospital. The paper quoted reports in the Peruvian paper La Crónica that an American film studio had sent down a representative "with authority to offer the sum of $5,000 to benefit the minor" in exchange for filming rights, but "we know that the offer was rejected". The article noted that Lozada had made films of Medina for scientific documentation and had shown them while addressing Peru's National Academy of Medicine; some baggage carrying the films had fallen into a river on a visit to the girl's hometown, but enough of his "pictorial record" remained to "intrigue the learned savants". A month and a half after the original diagnosis, Medina gave birth to a boy by caesarean section. She was 5 years, 7 months, and 21 days old, the youngest person in history to give birth. The caesarean birth was necessitated by her small pelvis. The surgery was performed by Lozada and Dr Busalleu, with Dr Colareta providing anaesthesia. The doctors found that she already had fully mature sexual organs from precocious puberty. Dr. Edmundo Escomel reported her case in the medical journalLa Presse Médicale, including the additional details that her menarche 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. Medina's son weighed at birth and was named Gerardo after her doctor. He was raised believing that Medina was his sister, but he found out at age 10 that she was his mother.
Medina has never revealed the father of the child nor the circumstances of her impregnation. Escomel suggested that she might not actually know herself, as she "couldn't give precise responses". Lina's father was arrested on suspicion of child sexual abuse, but he was released due to lack of evidence, and the biological father was never identified. Her son grew up healthy. He died in 1979 at the age of 40 from bone disease. In young adulthood, Medina worked as a secretary in the Lima clinic of Lozada, which gave her an education and helped put her son through high school. She married Raúl Jurado, who fathered her second son in 1972., they lived in a poor neighborhood of Lima known as "Little Chicago". She refused an interview with Reuters that year, just as she had turned away many reporters in years past.
Documentation
Although it was speculated that the case was 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. 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. In 1955, except for the effects of precocious puberty, there was no explanation of how a girl less than five years old could conceive a child. Extreme precocious pregnancy in children aged five or under has only been documented with Medina.
