My friend was telling me about something she saw on TV (she thought it might be Oprah). The story was that eight year olds were getting pregnant in Africa and since their bodies were not developed enough the baby would tear them apart inside. They would then give birth but because of the injuries they would smell like they were rotting. Their families would then build a separate room for the girls to live in because they smelled so bad and there was no medical help. The happy part of the story was a doctor moved to Africa from Australia and built a hospital and has been helping these girls for 20 years.
Now:
Can an eight-year really get pregnant? This seems about four years too early
If the fetus were causing so much damage wouldn’t the girl just have a miscarriage?
The part about smelling from rotting inside doesn’t make sense to me. If there is such serious internal injury wouldn’t the girl just die.
Can an eight-year really get pregnant? This seems about four years too early
** If a female is ovulating and having sex, she can get pregnant**
If the fetus were causing so much damage wouldn’t the girl just have a miscarriage?
** I heard some people at work talking about Oprah’s show and the damage they refer to seems to come from the girls’ pushing, not the carriage of the babies.**
The part about smelling from rotting inside doesn’t make sense to me. If there is such serious internal injury wouldn’t the girl just die
** The smell likely is from fecal matter, not rotting flesh. Sometimes the vagina, being so close to the rectum, will develop a passage and feces will leak through and out the vagina.**
Cyn, OB/GYN RN, who didn’t see this episode of Oprah, but has circulated in the OR for a rectocele or two.
Well, there’s an injury called an obstetric fistula that can occur when a woman is unable to give birth vaginally and cannot get a C-section. According to this,
Women with obstetric fistulas are often shunned by their families. The problem can be fixed with a simple operation that is, unfortunately, not often within the means of the women involved. It usually happens to younger women. Eight sounds way too young to be a typical age, but if an eight-year-old did get pregnant and wasn’t able to get a C-section, I would think that an obstetric fistula would be fairly likely.
In addition to what elfbabe shared, it should be noted that these women have often gone through days of labor, because they simply cannot birth vaginally, and the pressure of this protracted labor kills their babies in the womb or birth canal. So in addition to having these dreadful fistulas, they also lose their children.
As mentioned, these women are almost universally cast out of their homes and villages to fend for themselves, because they smell horrific, but also because it is presumed that this has happened to them because they are cursed or if they are permitted to stay around they will curse other mothers in their villages and others will suffer the same fate. Turned into pariahs, many “fistula women” end up dying from starvation, exposure or worse.
The “nurse” who has dedicated herself to helping them (for the last 30 years) is actually a doctor, Dr. Catherine Hamlin. She’s an amazing woman. Her hospital is The Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopa. Learn more about it at fistulahospital.org.
I saw that show and from what I remember, the girls were betrothed at and extremely young age (like 7 or 8) and would go to live with their husband’s family. They would not actually start being sexually active with their husbands until puberty. They were still very young (like 11 or 12) when giving birth, though.
It was a devastatingly sad show and Dr. Hamlin is incredible.
This can’t be true, can it? Africa and Pregnant Eight Year Olds
Yes, it can be true. And not just in far-off Africa. Look at the birth statistics for any US state or Canadian province, for example.
Back 20-some years, I worked in computer systems at the county government. At one time, I had to prepare a report on births of illegtimate children by age of the mother. I still remember the results, because they seemed astonishing to me:
9 year-old mother: 1 birth
10 year-old mother - 0 births
11 year-old mother - 2 births
12 year old mother - 5 births
and it went up fast from there.
I actually checked with the caseworkers, because I thought I had an error in my program. But they verified the cases in their records, and said the numbers seemed about right to them!
And this was over 20 years ago. I’d expect that girls today are even more healthy, and become fertile earlier, so the numbers are probably up from that.