A 10-year-old girl from Colombia has given birth to a baby girl making her join the list of Youngest Mothers.
She hails from Manaure, a town in La Guajira, and arrived at the hospital in tears and “enormous pain” from the contractions. She reportedly delivered her daughter, who weighed 5 pounds, by cesarean section.
Experts say a C-section delivery for such a young mother is not unusual.
“The baby’s head needs to come through a bony outlet. But in a young girl, the pelvis may not be ready or big enough to deliver a baby,” said Dr. Kimberly Gecsi, an OB/GYN at UH Case Medical Center in Cleveland.
The police can’t press any charges because the tribe has its own jurisdiction supporting such pregnancy.
“We’ve already seen several cases [of pregnancy] in girls of the Wayuu ethnicity,” Efraín Pacheco Casadiego, director of the hospital where the girl gave birth, told RCN La Radio noticias. “When in fact [the girls] should be playing with dolls, they are having to care for a baby. This is shocking.”
“Typically, menstruation is the last thing that happens in puberty,” said Gesci, adding that girls typically go through a growth spurt and develop breasts and pubic hair before menstruating. “If you notice those things, you could be about to menstruate and you could get pregnant.”