An 11-year-old girl has become Britain’s youngest mother after giving birth earlier this month, having gotten pregnant at 10 without her family being aware.
According to TheSun, the unnamed mother and her baby, that was delivered after more than 30 weeks of pregnancy, are both healthy and being cared for.
However, the publication added that social services are now investigating the circumstances that led to her pregnancy as family were oblivious to the fact their daughter was pregnant.
A source said;
It has come as a big shock. She’s now being surrounded by expert help. The main thing is that she and the baby are ok. There are questions around why people did not know. That is very worrying.
“This is the youngest mother I’ve heard of,’ a doctor named Carol Cooper told The Sun, explaining that the average age a girl begins puberty is 11, although it can be at anytime from 8 to 14.
Cooper added that weight has an effect on many hormones, and that as children are heavier than they used to be, puberty is now happening earlier.
However, there is a higher risk of problems developing when younger children are pregnant including premature labour, infections and pre-eclampsia.
Doctor Cooper added that ‘around one in every 2,500 births‘ occur to someone who either did not know she is pregnant, or has hidden it from their family and friends.
Before the 11-year-old gave birth, Britain’s youngest mother was Tressa Middleton, who was just 12 when she had a baby in 2006.
Middleton, who is now in her mid-20s, got pregnant after she was raped by her brother. Her child was taken into social care, and her brother was jailed.
Meanwhile, record for the youngest parents in Britain was a father aged 13 and a mother aged 12 when they had a child in 2014.
There was a reported case in 2017 of another girl in the UK giving birth aged 11 but no further details emerged.
Also, the youngest mum in the world was a Peruvian girl called Lina Media who was only five years and seven months old when she gave birth in May 1939 to a boy called Gerardo.
Her parents thought she had a tumour but when she was taken to hospital, she was found to be seven months pregnant.
