MalloryKeaton

The girl is way too young.

http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/90/...pregnancy.html

11-Year-Old Child Expects A Baby In Moscow

05/18/2005 16:45
A fourth grader was concealing her pregnancy from teachers and classmates till the end of April

Doctors of one of Moscow's maternity hospitals have an extraordinary patient: an eleven-year-old girl is 30 weeks pregnant. The girl's only relatives - a grandmother and her 14-year-old boyfriend - often visit the little girl at the hospital.

The girl, named only as Valentina, a fourth grader, was concealing her pregnancy from teachers and classmates till the end of April. School teachers say that she started wearing loose tops - that is why no one at school could see that a child was bearing a child. The secret was unveiled later, when Valentina did not feel well at classes. When the girl was hospitalized, she never appeared at school again, the Moskovsky Komsomolets reports.

"The girl is not ready for childbirth either psychologically or physically. It is very hard for a child's organism to deal with such adult experience as pregnancy. The girl is having problems with kidneys. The underage mother is expecting a boy: the fetus is already 1300 grams heavy, which is relatively enough even for a grownup woman," doctors say.

The would-be mother is an orphan; the girl is being raised by her grandmother. "The family of the baby's father lives in another city, in Astrakhan. The boy visited Moscow with his parents when he was twelve," Valentina's grandmother said. "Of course I noticed that my girl was not feeling good. She started having nausea more than usual, although I originally missed it out of my attention, because Valentina is allergic to vegetables and fruit," the woman added.

The headmaster of Valentina's school said that she would do her best to let the girl complete her secondary education, after she gives birth to her child. "Underage parents are not allowed to get married. The Russian law allows to do it from the age of 18 only. The girl will not have a right to raise the baby all by herself. She will not be entitled to receive any benefits either: she can obtain mother's status from the age of 16, when she can be considered responsible for her child's life," Doctor of Medical Sciences, Mikhail Vinogradov said.

A similar incident of underage pregnancy was registered last year in Ukraine. Bogdana Korenkova, a sixth grader, became a mother at the age of eleven. Bogdana's mother, 28-year-old Larisa, apparently the world's youngest grandmother, had no place to live, after she was asked to move out of the flat that she rented. The young woman went to the city administration, but she was advised to give the child away to orphanage, Ivanovo-press website reports.

The underage mother was determined to keep the baby. The girl said that she would never give the baby away to anybody. The Ukrainian child-mother gave birth to a healthy baby boy by Cesarean section. It took 20 minutes for the operation to last.

"It became a unique occurrence indeed. The baby boy is absolutely healthy. He is a beautiful and quiet child," a doctor said.

Such premature pregnancy is extremely rare in medical practice. Extremely early childbirth was registered in 1910, when a couple of Chinese children became world's youngest parents: the father was nine years and the mother was eight.

A six-year-old girl from the USSR became world's youngest mother in 1930. The record was beaten in 1939, though, when five-year-old Lina Medina from Peru became a mother.

Jen Jaree

Oh my god I can't beieve you can actually have kids that young

In Fair Verona

Dear lord! I'm speechless, that is just... People need to be paying a lot more attention to their kids when they're at such a young age, though unfortunately they may be orphans. The living situations in eastern Europe and Peru may be entirely different from the surburban environment I live in; in which I would think it would be almost impossible for a five year old to get impregnated since their parents would be watching her every move, taking her everywhere, being with her 24-7 except for school. So... aside from how it's possible due to social standards, how is it possible physically? I can buy a girl having her period at 11, that's not that shocking, but 5 or 6?

And on a side-note... allergic to fruits and vegetables? How does she get the required amount of nutrition?

- Jen -

I can understand how physically an 11 yr old would become pregnant, many girls start their period that early, but like In fair verona said, how is it possible for a 5/6 year old to get pregnant ?

did i miss a lesson in sex ed or something

-Kelly-

My GOD

Timeo

Wait, what is she doing with the fetus? Is she going to carry it to term?

LittleMilkJug

5 years old? OMG they are still babies at that age

Lain

5-6 year olds?!?

And I thought the Maury Show was worse!!!

Lazy

Girls can get pregnant when they're 5?? I can understand the 11 year old because I think in some cultures girls get married (or are more like forced) at very young age and become mothers at the age of 11 or 12. But a 5 year old??

Chilli

Woah. Preganant at 5/6???? Besides the fact that I didn't know what sex even was at 5, I thought that it would be physically impossible to get pregnant before puberty hit.

Colors

I did some "research" *(very, very sketchy research). Apparently Lina Medina started regularly having her period before the age of 1 (or as late as 3; sources differ). Her parents thought that she had some sort of tumor. They took her to the hospital, and she eventually gave birth by C-section. They raised her kid as their own, and the kid didn't know she was his mother until he was 10. They never found out who the father of the baby was, and she's said to live in Lima, Peru today with her husband.

One of the websites I looked at: http://www.snopes.com/pregnant/medina.asp

And this is supposed to be a English translation of the report of the event (from Dictionary of Medical Science, May 1939): http://www.sexualrecords.com/youngbirtheng.html
Original French: http://www.sexualrecords.com/youngbirthfre.html

Sunshine Baby

That is shocking.

This was in our English papers a couple of weeks ago.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4572219.stm

I just think it's really sad.

Sofa

Our psych teacher told us that even if a girl doesn't get her period, she could still be ovulating. That means that yes, at 5 or 6 years old she culd get pregnant.

That's really scary.

Lazy

Shocking!

-Kelly-

Age 1? poor Baby/kid