Born in Ticrapo, Peru,[1] to silversmith Tiburelo Medina and Victoria Losea,[2] Medina was brought to a hospital by her parents at the age of five years due to increasing abdominal size. She was originally thought to have had a tumor, but her doctors determined she was in her seventh month of pregnancy. Dr. Gerardo Lozada took her to Lima, Peru, to have other specialists confirm that Medina was pregnant.Contemporary newspaper accounts indicate that interest in the case developed on many fronts. The San Antonio Light newspaper reported in its July 16, 1939, edition—in anticipation of the girl's expected visit to U.S. university scientific facilities—that a national Peruvian obstetrician/midwife association had demanded that the girl be transported to a national maternity hospital; the paper quoted April 18 reports in the Peruvian paper La Crónica stating that a North American filmmaking concern sent a representative "with authority to offer the sum of $5,000 to benefit the minor [in exchange for filming rights] ... we know that the offer was rejected."[4] The same article, reprinted from a Chicago paper, noted that Lozada had made films of Medina for scientific documentation and had shown them around April 21 while addressing Peru's National Academy of Medicine; on a subsequent visit to visit Lina's remote hometown, some of the baggage carrying the films had been dropped into the river while crossing "a very primitive bridge": "Enough of his pictorial record remained, however, to intrigue the learned savants.A month and a half after the original diagnosis, Medina, at the age of 5 years and 7 months, gave birth to a boy by a caesarean section on May 14, 1939, necessitated by her small pelvis, which made her the youngest known person in history to give birth. The surgery was performed by Lozada and Dr. Busalleu, with Dr. Colareta providing anaesthesia. When doctors performed the caesarean to deliver her baby, they found she already had fully mature sexual organs from precocious puberty.[1] Her case was reported in detail by Dr. Edmundo Escomel in the medical journal La Presse Médicale, including the additional details that her menarche had occurred at eight months of age, in contrast to a past report stating that she had been having regular periods since she was three years old according to a different article).[1] The report also detailed that she had prominent breast development by the age of four. By age five, her figure displayed pelvic widening and advanced bone maturation.
Medina has never revealed the father of the child nor the circumstances of her impregnation. Escomel suggested she might not actually know herself by writing that Medina "couldn't give precise responses".[3] Although Lina's father was arrested on suspicion of child sexual abuse, he was later released due to lack of evidence, and the biological father who impregnated Lina was never identified.[3][7] Medina's son grew up healthy and died in 1979 at the age of 40.In young adulthood, Medina worked as a secretary in the Lima clinic of Lozada, who gave her an education and helped put her son through high school.[8] Medina later married Raúl Jurado, who fathered her second son in 1972. As of 2002, they lived in a poor district of Lima known as "Chicago Chico"[9] ("Little Chicago").She refused an interview with Reuters that year just as she had turned away many reporters in years past.
Medina has never revealed the father of the child nor the circumstances of her impregnation. Escomel suggested she might not actually know herself by writing that Medina "couldn't give precise responses".[3] Although Lina's father was arrested on suspicion of child sexual abuse, he was later released due to lack of evidence, and the biological father who impregnated Lina was never identified.[3][7] Medina's son grew up healthy and died in 1979 at the age of 40.In young adulthood, Medina worked as a secretary in the Lima clinic of Lozada, who gave her an education and helped put her son through high school.[8] Medina later married Raúl Jurado, who fathered her second son in 1972. As of 2002, they lived in a poor district of Lima known as "Chicago Chico"[9] ("Little Chicago").She refused an interview with Reuters that year just as she had turned away many reporters in years past.
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