Lina Medina (born September 27, 1933 in Paurange, Peru) gave birth at the age of 5 years, 7 months and 21 days and is the youngest confirmed mother in medical history.
Lina was brought to a hospital by her parents at the age of 5 years because of increasing abdominal size. She was originally thought to have had a tumor, but her doctors determined she was in the seventh month of pregnancy. Dr. Gerardo Lozada took her to Lima, the capital of Peru, prior to the surgery to have other specialists confirm that Lina was in fact pregnant. A month and a half later, on May 14, 1939, she gave birth to a boy by a caesarean section necessitated by her small pelvis. The surgery was performed by Drs. Lozada and Dr. Busalleu, with Dr. Colretta providing anaesthesia. Her case was reported in detail by Dr. Edmundo Escomel to La Presse Medicale, along with the additional details that her menarche had occurred at 8 months of age, and prominent breast development by 4 years. By age 5 her figure displayed pelvic widening and advanced bone maturation.
Her son weighed 2.7 kg (5.9 lbs) at birth and was named Gerardo after her doctor. Gerardo was raised believing that Lina was his sister, but found out that she was his mother at the age of ten. He grew up healthy but died in 1979 at the age of 40 of a disease of the bone marrow.
There was never evidence that Lina Medina's pregnancy occurred in any but the usual way, but she never revealed the father of the child, nor the circumstances of her impregnation. She refused an interview with Reuters in 2002. Medina later married Raúl Jurado, who fathered her second son in 1972. They live in a poor district of Lima known as Chicago Chico ("Little Chicago").
