Random Rumor: Youngest Mother in Modern History

Dr. Lozada, Lina and little Gerardo in 1939

This Random Rumor is provided by Snopes.

Yes, there is a record of the youngest mother in modern history.  And yes, you will be surprised.

Lina Medina was 5 years old when she gave birth to her son, Gerardo.

Born in Peru in 1933, Lina's pregnancy was documented by physician/researcher Edmundo Escomel and Dr. Gerardo Lozada, then the chief of staff at the Hospital of Pisco.  According to the girl's medical history, she had fully developed breasts and had been menstruating since she was 8 months old.  She delivered her son via Cesarean Section on May 14, 1939.

Her father was jailed while the police investigated him for incest, but they couldn't find any evidence to support the idea.  Lina didn't have the verbal skills necessary to explain what happened to her, and no one ever figured out who the father of her child was.

Lina grew up relatively normally after that...her son was raised by her parents as though he was their youngest child.  She married, had another son (who lives in Mexico) and still resides in Peru.

In-Lawlessness

My in-laws have discovered Skype.  I suggest you purchase stock.

Yesterday in our Mother's Day Skype session, My Husband and I were making nice with his mom, dad and two oldest brothers.  Holden (blond, handsome, angry, oldest) behaved himself very well.   Dorian (dark, artistic, stubborn, middlest) sat down, grinned at us and I and asked if I was menstruating.  He found this to be a clever, funny way to see if I was pregnant yet. 

I gaped, My Husband's mother gave Dorian a dirty look and repeated a number of times that "No one here talks about that; we don't discuss that at all," and My Husband shook his head and said told his brother that's a completely inappropriate thing to say.   Dorian said, "I'm joking," and My Husband replied, "It doesn't matter; that's so over the line."   Dorian huffed, "Fine then," and left.   We didn't see him again the rest of the conversation.

My mother-in-law continued to assure us they never discuss my fertility, which obviously means they do but she knows we find it to be a private topic unfit for general family conversation.  She and Holden talk about it on a regular basis...when My Husband left for Iraq she went fishing for information and told me over the phone they'd been trying to figure out when my cycle was to see if it was plausible My Husband knocked me up before deploying.  My reaction was one of alarm and she hasn't brought it up since.

The conversation went on pretty normally from there.  Afterward My Husband told me he was not happy with Dorian's remarks or the fact he's likely to stew about My Husband's sharp response and add it to his running list of Life Grievances.  Dorian's a grudgey sort.

For some reason the amount of serotonin in my brain was higher than usual and I was able to look at the bright side of this conversation: My Husband's mother was taking pains to keep us happy.  If the same sort of thing had happened a few years ago, she would have told My Husband he was overreacting and that Dorian didn't mean anything by it.  The look she gave him and the lack of reprimand toward us was a pretty positive step.  I think she's starting to realize her best bet for happily married children and pretty, polite, well-adjusted grandchildren is My Husband and me.

I've told you before Holden and Dorian have their own issues and show no signs of getting married in the next few years.  The only daughter, India, has a husband and a little girl but she bears the brunt of the family's judgement.  Everything from her parenting skills to her career to her finances comes under fire.  And her daughter gets a bit more bratty every day.  Comes from being the sole grandchild/niece of a very possessive family.

So it seems My Husband's mother has finally placed her bet on the right team, so to speak, and wants to stay on our good side.  As I'm sure there will be more juvenile behavior from his siblings in the future, I hope it stays that way. 

Baby Talk Part Deux: A Decision

On Saturday My Husband ran in an annual St. Patrick's Day 10K here in town.  He placed 45th out of about 1500 people.  In case you couldn't tell, he's a runner...track & field all through high school and college.

Afterward he was feeling pretty sore so we spent the rest of the evening at home relaxing.  Eventually our conversation turned to starting a family, and we actually made a decision.

I'm going off birth control in April, May, June and possibly July.  If we get pregnant, we get pregnant.  If we don't, then I'm going back on birth control.

We came to this conclusion after My Husband's superiors informed him his squad is more than likely deploying to Afghanistan in April 2012.  July 2011 is nine months from April 2012, so that was the stop marker we decided on.  He and I both would rather not my due date be right around the time he's scheduled to go overseas.

We also discussed waiting until his five year contract with the army is up...but he wants to make it to Company Commander, which is probably a seven year stint.  My Husband told me he didn't want to wait that long to start a family.  Sidenote: I know it's all the hormones flying around in my brain after thousands of years of evolution, but I can think of only a few things sexier than the man you love telling you he wants to have children with you.

I suggested we look at the approximate timeline for the next few years.  I'm quite the control freak and I would probably plan this out until Judgement Day.  My Husband, wisely, pointed out the futility of this...we're an Army family.  You never really know what's coming, and if we attempted to map out every detail based on a "perfect" scenario we'd go insane.  I told him I don't know if I could leave such a major decision in God's hands.

My Husband said, "Lark, it's already in God's hands.  You're only accepting what's already true."

His serenity amazes me sometimes.

I asked him if he was prepared to miss our baby's "firsts": rolling over, talking, walking.  He told me it would hurt but it was worth it to know we had a family of our own.  Afghanistan, of course, is a completely different deployment than Iraq.  He may shut himself off emotionally the entire year in order to deal with it, which will prevent him from pining for his wife and child.

I told him I would only agree to this if he acknowledged that if I thought our little family wasn't "meshing" when he returned, we'd go to counselling immediately.  He consented.  So this is where we're at.  I feel like I've just chosen a college...I'm excited and terrified and can't wait to begin but desperately want everything to stay exactly the same.

PROS/CONS of Our Decision:
PROS:
1. Having a baby with the love of my life!
2. Having a baby at a young enough age where the problems (hopefully) are minimal.
3. Pregnancy at a time where my husband can be there for me.
4. Possibly having a newborn while he's home as well.
5. Getting to be a mom.
6. Getting everyone's attention almost all the time.
7. Above deserves two spots.  I love attention.
8. Focusing on my own health and well-being because I'm focusing on the baby's.
9. Hormones making me beautiful (hopefully).
10. Not being fat pregnant through the heat of summer.
11. A due date in the winter/early spring with a good chunk of time to lose pounds before summer.
12. Having people do things for me because of the belly.
13. Maybe not even getting pregnant at all.

CONS:
1. OH.  MY.  GOD.  I'm gonna be a mom.
2. My Husband possibly missing all our baby's firsts.
3. Being alone with a newborn.
4. Having a newborn while My Husband's deployed...can't wallow like I did last round.
5. Oh, the responsibility...
6. Dealing with My Husband's mom for 12 months.  Alone.  "No, Mom, I don't think you should move in with me to 'help out.'"
7. Being the only one of my friends/sisters with a child.  Talk about being a guinea pig.

There are more PROS than CONS and all the PROS are big and most of the CONS are nitty-gritty.  Plus, the idea is that if we do get pregnant in the next few months, it means that God knows I can handle it.  If I can just keep reminding myself of that...

Stay tuned.  Things in my life are getting serious.

Baby Talk

My Husband and I are talking about getting pregnant.  As is customary for me, as soon as we began discussing it seriously I raced out to the library to get books about pregnancy.  I’ve always depended deeply on the research and opinions of experts (or at least people who have experienced an event I have not) and let’s face it…knowledge is reassuring.  Libraries even smell like safety. 

So far, I’ve read the following:

·         Before Your Pregnancy: a 90-Day Guide for Couples on How to Prepare for a Healthy Conception by Amy Ogle & Lisa Mazzullo

·         What to Expect Before You’re Expecting by Heidi Murkoff with Sharon Mazel

·         Perfect Hormone Balance for Fertility: The Ultimate Guide to Getting Pregnant by Robert Greene

·         Misconceptions: Truth, Lies and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood by Naomi Wolf

·         Vaginas: an Owner’s Manual by Dr. Carol Livoti & Elizabeth Topp

I found Before Your Pregnancy and Perfect Hormone Balance to be informative but a little preachy about organic foods and living.  The latter has this whole section on “biomutagens” that reads like your baby will develop horns and a tail if you use hairspray or nail polish while pregnant.  I did learn why you should cut caffeine; not only can it constrict your blood vessels and diminish flow to the baby, but your baby can come out addicted to caffeine!  So they cry and cry because they want caffeine but they have no idea what it is.  That stuff’s like crack.

What to Expect has been the Bible for pregnancy for years.  It had some useful tidbits, but half the time I felt like I was being spoken to by that youth group pastor who’s trying desperately to be cool: “Now that you’re talking baby, will you have to say ‘later’ to your morning lattes—and ‘nighty-night’ to your nightcaps (p30)?”  Ummm…yes?  “Been trying for a few months to hit baby bingo, but without success (p120)?”  It’s like every sentence ends with a pause for a recorded laugh track.

Naomi Wolf’s Misconceptions was one of the most depressing books I’ve ever read.  It chronicles her issues of losing her sense of self after becoming a mother, her traumatic and detached Cesarean section and her post-partum depression.  She also harps on American culture and its response to motherhood, race and wealth.  Don’t get me wrong, all of her points are necessary to get a full spectrum of conception and birth in the United States (I’m sure she’s frightened plenty of women into opting out of motherhood) and it wasn’t information I found in any of my other books. 

For example, did you know it’s customary for doctors to slice the perineum (the space between the vulva and the anus) down to the muscle in order to make a wider outlet for the baby during labor?  It’s called an episiotomy.  They do it to prevent a tear during birth, even though most tears are superficial and much less drastic than the surgical cut.  Most of the time an episiotomy results in increased post-partum pain and bleeding, trouble defecating and severe issues with sexual function for up to SEVEN years (p170).  Wolf instead suggests women demand massage of the perineum with something like olive oil and a slow labor to permit the perineum to stretch accordingly.  In her book she mentions some celebratory midwives who ‘caught’ (a midwife’s term for delivering a baby) “an 11lb, 4oz baby girl over an intact perineum (p171)!”

I didn’t know any of this, and you can bet because of her book I’ll be doing A LOT more research.  But chapter after chapter of heartache and milk stains and lack of appropriate health care and support was extremely wearisome.  I guess it’s just one of those things…you have to take the bad with the good.

I loved Vaginas.  I really did.  It’s written by an Ob/Gyn and her daughter in a gossipy yet informative manner.  Kind of like your favorite teacher from high school who does lessons about phenethylamine by handing out chocolate.  I liked it so much I even read parts of it aloud to My Husband (he probably appreciated it less).  Considering most of my “sexual education” consisted of a seventh-grade video in which dozens of speedoed and swim-capped men flounder erratically in a swimming pool toward a sole serene woman in an inner tube, it was kind of nice to really start to understand the inner workings of my body. 

(To be fair, my mother showed my sisters and me a video about puberty around the same time.  I had gotten the original “talk” from her years before…I was six years old…because a local boy my age had been molested by his dentist and I asked her curiously one evening what rape was.  All I remember from these discussions was thinking the whole idea of coming-of-age and conception was disgusting and I wanted nothing to do with it).

So my research continues.  I have a few more books I’d like to look up, but the REAL verdict about a baby is still to come.  I’ll never find that on a library shelf.