When a 'baby' gives birth to a baby

An 11-year-old American girl has given birth. Yes, an 11-year-old.

On Friday, Fox reported the news.

"My daughter and (her) baby are fine, and the baby is absolutely beautiful," the mother of the 11-year-old girl told Fox. The girl and her family live in the Northeastern United States and are not being named in order to protect the new parent's privacy.

Having a baby is an overwhelming experience that rocks your world and offers up wonderful experiences but also great challenges. Most would agree that it's easiest to go through the life-changing event when you're mature, settled, responsible, and physically and mentally prepared to care for another human being. Usually this happens in your 20s or 30s.

But in the United States it's not uncommon for teenagers to get pregnant, and a recent report by the Guttmacher Institute says teen pregnancies in the U.S. were up 3 percent in 2006. But this isn't about a teenager. This is about a child delivering a child.

"Her body is clearly not defined for pregnancy with its short stature," Dr. Abdulla Al-Khan, a leading high-risk obstetrician, told Fox News. "Her chest is not extensively developed for breast tissue, her bones aren't quite fused, and once you expose a child this young to high amounts of progesterone and especially estrogen, there is (a possibility) that it could halt her growth."

Also, last week a 9-year-old girl gave birth in Changchun, China, the Daily Mail reported. Police are trying to determine who the father is.

The Mail reported:

In the province, sex with a child under the age of 14 brings an automatic rape conviction and a lengthy jail sentence.

A legal expert told the paper that women under the age of 14 do not have sexual rights - 'so any argument of being consensual as a defence is completely untenable,' he said.

He added: 'Anyone who had sexual relations with a girl under 14 means they have committed rape and is to be punished severely.'

A hospital in China's largest city, Shanghai, recently said that about 30 percent of abortions were on school-aged girls.

The youngest ever reported mother was a Peruvian girl, Lina Medina, who was pregnant at five years and gave birth to a normal boy at age six. In 1957 another Peruvian girl, age 9, became a mother, and later an 8-year-old delivered. In Thailand, Singapore, Rwanda, and Brazil several girls age 9 have had babies, and according to the Mail mothers between 10 and 11 years old are an increasing occurrence around the world.

When a child gives birth to a baby this is clearly an unfortunate event, doctors agree. "This is heart-wrenching because you have a kid whose mental capacities can't possibly wrap themselves around what it means to be a mother," Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist told Fox about the 11-year-old American girl's birth. "There are so many psychological minefields in store for her. Feelings of guilt, feelings of wanting to nurture another human being, and yet this is all very, very complex and intense when she looks to her own family to essentially support, and if you will, father her child."

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