One day in May 1939, as soon as Fernando Medina, a carpenter living in a remote village in the Peruvian province of Ticlabo, arrived home, his wife complained with her mouth: "You went to Lima to work for people, why didn't you come back for so long?" Come and see our daughter Linna, I suspect she has some strange disease, I have to take her to the doctor immediately!" ”
For his wife's complaints, Fernando did not agree. He just thinks that he has not returned from working in Lima for several months, and his wife is very hard at home to take care of the children, and he wants to complain. Besides, her daughter Linna is only five years old this year, she has always been lively and cheerful, and she has never had any illness, what can she do?
Seeing that Fernando did not believe it, his wife called Linna, who was playing with her friends, home. As soon as Lina entered the door, Fernando felt that something was wrong, how come she had only been seen for a few months, and her daughter's stomach stood tall like a balloon that had been blown up?
What happened to my daughter's belly
In fact, long before Fernando left home, he had noticed that Linna's stomach seemed to be a little swollen compared to other children. However, the carpenter did not pay attention to it, he just thought that his daughter might have eaten too much and did not pay much attention to it, thinking that it would be fine in a few days.
After all, for this poor carpenter, a trip to the hospital means that half a month's work is in vain. Now seeing Linna's belly swollen like a big balloon, he felt the seriousness of the matter - isn't it Linna's tumor that she suffers from?
The next day, Fernando and his wife rushed with Lina to a hospital in Ticlabo. The doctor scratched his head after examining Linna, and a strange expression appeared on his face.
Fernando asked his daughter several times what kind of disease she had, and the doctor wanted to talk and stop, only saying that the equipment of Ticlabo Hospital was not good and could not find out the cause of Linna, and then persuaded Fernando to take her daughter to the big hospital in the capital Lima.
Seeing that the doctor had been refusing to say the cause of his daughter, Fernando was also a little panicked. After all, among several children, Linna is the most well-behaved one and Fernando's most beloved one, and he wants to save Linna's life no matter what. So Fernando decided that he would take his daughter to Lima for treatment.
As soon as Fernando walked on his front foot, several doctors from Ticlapo Hospital huddled together and muttered. An older doctor muttered to the younger doctors: "My God!" I've never been in a situation like this, how is this possible? A five-year-old girl is actually seven months pregnant! Can anyone tell me, what's going on?
The old doctor's words, of course, Fernando did not hear. He rushed with his daughter to a large hospital in Lima, the capital, and found the famous doctor, Gerard Horado Lozada.
When Linna's test results came out, Rao, who had been a doctor all his life, also felt incredible. After checking the results of the test repeatedly, he told Fernando: Linna is not sick, she is pregnant, and the child in her belly is seven months old!
Lozada's words infuriated Fernando. He yelled at Losada, "Are you kidding me? No, it's not funny at all! If you don't have the ability to find out what disease my daughter has, just change the doctor, I'm not in the mood to listen to your nonsense! ”
After Fernando's anger subsided, Losada told Fernando that Linna, unlike ordinary girls, suffered from a disease called "precocious puberty" at birth.
Although she is only five years old now, she has already had a period, her breasts have developed, and even her pelvis has opened. Losada has practiced medicine in his whole life and has never encountered a case like Linna.
Under Lozada's reminder, Fernando's wife also recalled some abnormalities in Linna.
When Lina was three years old, she found blood on Linna's panties when she washed her panties, and at that time she thought that her daughter wiped the skin on her butt when she was playing with her friends, and now I think about it, it should be that Lina began to have menstruation around March!
Although Fernando was still not convinced, the poor carpenter followed Dr. Lozada's advice and hospitalized his daughter.
A five-year-old girl gave birth to a 2.7 kg baby boy
A few days later, on May 14, Linna developed symptoms of prenatal labor pains. Losada made a quick decision, and his assistant Dr. Rosa personally performed a caesarean section for Linna, and from Linna's young body, a 2.7-kilogram baby boy was rescued.
Only at this time, Fernando, who was guarding the operating room, believed that his five-year-old daughter had really given birth to a grandson for him.
It's just that Fernando wasn't happy at all, so when the nurse showed him the child and asked him to name the child, the carpenter was obviously absent-minded and said casually: "The child was delivered by Dr. Gerard Horado Lozada, let's name the child Horado!" ”
Within two days, the news that a five-year-old girl had given birth to a 2.7kg baby boy spread through the streets of Lima. Reporters from all walks of life also flocked to surround Linna's hospital room - this kind of ancient anecdote is the object of the reporters' chase.
Although the reporters racked their brains, they did not extract the secret of who the child's father was from Linna's mouth.
For a while, Lima's major newspapers were full of various conjectures, some people guessed that the child's father was a teenager who often played with Linna, some guessed that it was the head of Linna's village, and even some people guessed that Fernando lost his conscience and laid a "black hand" on his daughter.
Badly, many people actually believe that Fernando is the father of the child, and some people even called the police in indignation, asking the police to investigate Fernando to find out whether the father had attacked his daughter.
After receiving the alarm, the police also sent people to the hospital to investigate Fernando. However, the police quickly ruled out Fernando's suspicions, because according to time calculations, when Lina was pregnant with the child, Fernando was working for people in the field, and did not return during the period, so there was no "crime time".
After Fernando's suspicions were ruled out, the police also launched an investigation into who the child's biological father was. Unfortunately, in the face of the police, Linna never said a word, and when she asked urgently, she cried. After all, it was a five-year-old child, and the police had nothing to do with Linna, so they had to hastily collect troops and suspend the investigation.
As the doctor involved in the "five-year-old girl gave birth to a baby boy" incident, Dr. Losada was also puzzled by the incident. After the surgery, he collaborated with Dr. Edmundo Iskaman at the hospital to create a paper that was published in the Peruvian journal La Presse Medicale.
In the paper, the two doctors highlighted a series of special reactions such as Linna's menarche at 8 months old, significant breast development at age 4, and pelvic maturity at age 5, but the two did not find the cause of these in the paper.
After the publication of the paper, some medical professionals pointed out that there was no such thing as a "five-year-old girl giving birth to a baby boy", and that it was all a deliberate farce designed by Dr. Losada and his companions in collusion with the Fernando family, saying that the babies born normally by other women were born to five-year-old Linna, in order to become famous.
Faced with these doubts, Dr. Losada presented evidence to prove his innocence - a photo taken for Lina by the hospital when she was first hospitalized.
At that time, Linna was seven and a half months pregnant, and although the quality of the photos was not particularly clear, she could still see five-year-old Linna lying on the hospital bed with a big belly. At the same time, the hospital also provided X-ray photos of the fetal bones taken during Linna's examination to prove the authenticity of this matter.
The incident of a 5-year-old girl giving birth also aroused the interest of many medical professionals at that time. These medical professionals believe that the vast majority of girls basically have the ability to get pregnant after their first menstruation.
But at that time, the vast majority of women did not have menstruation until they were about 12 years old, and when menstruation first came, the weight of girls' ovaries was only 30% of the maturity period, and they would not reach maturity until the age of 17. Why Lina became fertile so early has also become a topic of controversy.
At this time, a doctor from England put forward a new point of view. He believes that Linna did not give birth to his own child, but a rare "parasitic fetus", and that Linna gave birth to her "twin brother".
"Parasitic fetus", also known as endovial or encapsulated parasitic fetus, is a special condition of conjoined infants. It is that Linna is actually a twin, but when she is in her mother's belly, she wraps another embryo in her mother's body into her body. In newborns, the incidence of this lesion is 1 in 500,000 and is less common clinically.
The idea of "parasitic fetus" put forward by British doctors is not widely agreed. Because the parasitic fetus is mostly surrounded by a connective tissue, development is incomplete. Even today, no surviving parasitic fetus has ever been born in the world. So this view is untenable.
Dr. Edmundo, one of Peru's most prestigious doctors, believes that Linna's pregnancy is an extreme condition of precocious puberty, which belongs to central precocious puberty, which causes five-year-old Linna's ovaries to develop almost as well as adult women.
Start a new life
The news that a five-year-old girl gave birth to a baby boy was gradually forgotten after a few months of sensation. But for the Linna family, a new life has just begun.
After spending two weeks in the hospital surrounded by reporters, Lina returned to her hometown in Ticlabo province with her father with her child. The village was relatively isolated and the villagers rarely read the newspapers, so Fernando decided to tell a lie.
He told the villagers that the baby boy was an abandoned baby he had picked up while taking Lina to see a doctor in Lima, and he had named him Horador. In this way, Linna became Horador's sister.
Since Fernando was always honest, the villagers did not doubt his words. People just sigh that Fernando is a good person, he has a hard time, and he can kindly adopt an abandoned baby, what a good person, God will definitely bless him!
But paper can't contain the fire after all. A few months later, several local villagers went to Lima to run errands and overheard the truth about the incident. The men returned and approached Fernando to confirm that Fernando admitted that Horado was born to five-year-old Linna. But he asked these people to keep it secret for him, because he was afraid that it would affect the normal life of Linna's mother and daughter.
Several villagers were kind and all agreed to Fernando's request. Therefore, Horado has always spent his childhood as Linna's "younger brother".
When Holardo was 10 years old, a villager who had asked Fernando for confirmation was drunk, saw Horado, did not hold the door on his lips for a while, and told Horado the truth. He ran home to ask Lina for confirmation, and Linna admitted that He Rado was not her brother, but her son.
The year Holardo learned the truth, Lina was fifteen years old. Over the years, Dr. Losada has not forgotten the girl, and every year he donates Lina some money to get her education. Perhaps in Dr. Lozada's opinion, it was this girl who made her famous in the medical world, so he wanted to repay Linna in this way.
In 1951, at the age of 17, after graduating from high school, Lina was admitted to a medical school with the financial support of Dr. Losada and studied nursing. After graduating, she came to the hospital where Dr. Losada was located, worked as Dr. Lozada's assistant, and had her own income and her own life.
After having a job, Linna focused all her energy on the cultivation of her son Horado. After receiving her salary every month, in addition to leaving her basic living expenses, she sent all of them back to her hometown for Horado to study.
Over the years, many people have pursued her, but she is afraid of affecting Horador and has never agreed. It wasn't until 1963, after graduating from college and landing a job in another Peruvian city, that she accepted a marriage proposal from a man named Raul. At this time, she was 34 years old.
Strange to say, although Lina gave birth to her first child at the age of five, after marrying Raul, she could not conceive a child for a long time. It wasn't until 1972 that she became a mother again after she turned forty and gave birth to her second son. Pinch your fingers, the child is a full 33 years younger than Horado.
I don't know why, after work, Horado's health has been not good, and he even suffered from osteomalacia, and when the condition was serious, he couldn't even walk. Although Linna took Herado to many hospitals, she was never able to cure Herado's illness. In 1979, Holardo died at the age of 40.
Lina today
Horado's death hit Lina hard. At this time, her husband Raul was also unemployed.
In order to survive, Lina and her husband had to sell their house in Lima's middle class and move with her second child to a slum called "Little Chicago" in Lima, where they used the money from the sale to open a shop. Although life is not rich, but the family can be together, Linna said she is very satisfied.
In 2009, Linna's husband died at the age of 75. Since then, she has lived alone in Sandoval District, nicknamed "Little Chicago." The son she and her husband had worked as a sailor for an ocean company and spent most of the year at sea, only during the holidays to visit Linna.
Today's Linna is 89 years old. Even her neighbors rarely saw her being the youngest woman in the Guinness Book of Records to give birth to a child. The woman who gave birth to a child at the age of five, but her health has always been healthy, which has to be said to be a miracle.
Every year on Mother's Day, Elaine Kapu, the secretary of Lima's Sandoval district, sends someone to visit Lina and gives Linna some living allowances on behalf of the district. In 2022, Elaine Karp also brought a gas stove to Linna's house, which made Linna happy - she finally didn't have to cook on the kerosene stove.
According to one of Linna's neighbors, Lina had accidentally mentioned it in a casual chat, but she didn't even know who the man who caused her to become pregnant at the age of five was, and she only remembered attending a local Indian carnival when she was taken into the grass by a masked Indian man.
As for who this man was, she didn't know who this man was at the time, let alone what the consequences would be.
The birth of a child "Guinness Record"
After telling Linna's story, we should feel that the world is big, it is really amazing. To this day, Linna remains the Guinness Book of Records holder of the title of "Woman Who Gave Birth at the Youngest Age". Some people may be curious, what other women are there in the Guinness Book of Records besides Linna?
The winner of the title of "Oldest Mother" is the Indian Devi. In November 2008, she gave birth to her first child at the age of 70. Amazingly, after the birth of the child, Devi also secreted breast milk! No wonder the old woman proudly said that she was going to raise her child with breast milk.
The woman who "gave birth to the most children at once" is Sulman, a woman from the United States. She once gave birth to 8 twins, and even more rarely, all 8 children survived.
The "mother who gave birth to the most" was Valentina Vasilieva from Russia. She had 69 children in her lifetime, including 16 twins, 7 triplets and 1 quadruplet. Of the 69 children, 67 survived.
The "smallest mom" is Stacey Herald from Kentucky, USA.
She is only about 0.7m tall, and the doctor once told her that pregnancy could kill her, but she still gave birth to two children. Her child is said to have been half her height when she was born. Because of his short stature, Herald could hardly hold children, and her husband did all the housework.
The title of "Mother of the World's Youngest Baby" belongs to Sheikh from Bangladesh.
On September 19, 2004, Sheikh gave birth to a baby who was only 243.8g, lighter than a can of beer and only 10 inches long, and she also replaced Ireland's Madeleine Mann as the mother of the world's youngest baby. It is said that from pregnancy to giving birth to the baby, Sheikh took only 25 weeks and 6 days.
Resources:
Quest Magazine: The World's Youngest Mother: Lena Medina
Wang Miaomiao: "Lina Medina - Superstar"
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Author: Li Li
EDIT: As it is