A 10-year-old Colombian girl has given birth to a healthy baby girl, making her one of the youngest mothers ever.
According to Univision’s Primer Impacto, the unnamed girl from Manaure, a town in the Colombian Department of La Guajira, arrived at the hospital in tears and “enormous pain” from the contractions.
She reportedly delivered her daughter, who weighed 5 pounds, by caesarean 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,” ABC News quoted Dr. Kimberly Gecsi, an OB/GYN at UH Case Medical Center in Cleveland, as telling RCN La Radio noticias.
The new mom is a member of the Wayuu people, an indigenous tribe in northern Colombia.
The age of the father is unknown, but police can’t press charges because the tribe has its own jurisdiction, according to local reports.
“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, said.
“When in fact [the girls] should be playing with dolls, they are having to care for a baby. This is shocking,” Casadiego added.