9-year-old gives birth to baby girl in Mexico

A 9-year-old Mexican girl gave birth via Cesarean section to a baby in January as a search continues for the 17-year-old father of the child.

The young mother, whose name is reportedly Dafne, gave birth on January 27 in a Jalisco hospital near Guadalajara, reported ABC News.

Dafne and her child are both healthy and recovering at home, said Dr. Enrique Rabago, director of Zoquipan Hospital, at a press conference Wednesday. Doctors decided to perform a C-Section, Rabago said, "due to her young age and the fact that her body was not ready to give birth."

According to the Jalisco State Prosecutor's office, Dafne described her relationship with the child's father as loving but was unwilling to release any further information.

"Due to her young age, we don't know if she's being entirely truthful," said Lino Ginzalez Corona, a spokesperson for the prosecutor's office. "She did not realize that she was pregnant until the seventh month."

Corona also said, according to Dafne's account, the child's father suggested she and the baby move in with him, but he left town when she refused.

The office is "still open to the possibility of rape or child abuse," Corona said.

Dafne is one of 11 children from a family living in Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos, 25 miles south of Guadalajara.

While giving birth at such a young age is obviously unusual, it is not impossible. The age when girls start menstruating is dropping--although the average is still about 12--and even lower among Hispanic girls. Pregnancy can occur before a girl ever gets her first period, since the bleeding occurs at the end of the menstrual cycle after ovulation.

The youngest known biological birth was by a girl of 5 years, 7 months, who had a condition called precocious puberty--when the hormone glands kick in very soon after birth--in Peru in 1939.