A nine-year-old gave a birth to a baby girl last month in Mexico's western Jalisco state. Authorities have said that they are looking for the baby's purported father, who is 17 years old.
The young mother, identified only as Dafne, gave birth to the healthy 5-pound, 15 ounce girl on Jan 27 by caesarean section at a hospital in Zapopan city.
"The girl was just over eight when she got pregnant," the mother of the girl told Jalisco authorities, according to news agency AFP.
"The father is a boy who is 17, but we have not found him, since he ran away," she added.
Both mother and daughter were given a clean bill of health and discharged from the hospital over the weekend. Hospital authorities said that a follow-up would be required considering the girl's age.
"Due to her age, her body is not able (or) in the best shape to have a baby," Enrique Rabago, director of the Hospital General de Occidente, told a news conference, according to USA Today.
Dafne said that she was dating the 17-year-old boy, and when she found out she was pregnant he suggested living together. After Dafne refused to move in with him, the teenager decided to leave the town.
"Due to her young age, we don't know if she is being entirely truthful," Lino Ginzalez Corona, spokesperson at Jalisco State Prosecutor's Office, told ABC News.
"We are looking for the young man to get his story because she does not understand what has happened. This is a rape or child sex abuse case," Jorge Villasenor, from the state prosectors' office told AFP.
Dafne and her 10 siblings live with their parents in Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos, around 30 kilometres from Guadalajara.
"Her parents work all day and were not watching after her, and therefore didn't realize what was about to happen," said Corona.
Other young mothers in the past:
Lina Vanessa Medina, from Peru, is the youngest mother who gave birth to a baby boy in May 1939, when she was just five years and seven months old. Her parents initially assumed that their daughter had a tumour and took her to hospital only to discover that she she was seven months pregnant.
Yelizaveta "Liza" Gryshchenko had turned six days before she gave birth to a stillborn baby girl in Kharkov, Ukraine, in August 1934. She was impregnated by her 69-year-old maternal grandfather.
A six-year, seven-month-old girl, known only as "H", gave birth to a girl at Victoria Zanana Hospital in Delhi, in June 1932. She was admitted to hospital for what was thought to be an abdominal tumour.
In August 1933, an eight-year-old unidentified girl from Kashmir, India, died in labour along with her baby.
Griseldina Acuña from Colombia gave birth to a baby boy in September 1936. A family friend was believed to have impregnated her. She reportedly started menstruating at the age of three.
Nine-year-old Estelle P from the US reportedly gave birth to a boy in March 1908.
