12-Year-Old Indian Girl Gives Birth in Mexico EFE
go to original April 20, 2012

Due to financial necessity, the adolescent soon will have to return to the fields to provide for her baby. (EFE)

CULIACAN, Mexico - A 12-year-old indigenous farmworker has given birth at a hospital in the northwestern Mexican city of Escuinapa, medical officials said.

The girl, identified as Elodia, told doctors and nurses that she had continued to pick tomatoes and chili peppers in a valley outside that city in Sinaloa state until the final days of her pregnancy.

A native of Tlapa in the mountains of the southern state of Guerrero, Elodia was only able to answer a few questions from the staff at the Escuinapa General Hospital because she has limited command of Spanish.

She said she did not know she was pregnant and that she lives in the Sinaloa community of Isla del Bosque, where she shares a very small room with many different people.

Despite being underweight, the 2.8-kilo (6.2-pound) baby girl - born Wednesday - is healthy and the only postnatal problem is that the pre-teen mother has not been able to breastfeed. At the hospital, the doctors and nurses have sought different alternatives to nourish the newborn.

Due to financial necessity, the adolescent soon will have to return to the fields to provide for her baby.

Last November, an 11-year-old in the central Mexican state of Puebla gave birth to a 1.5-kilogram (3.3 pound) boy after a 31-week pregnancy.

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