Dutch Girl, 12, Gives Birth on School Trip

A 12-year old Dutch schoolgirl gave birth to a baby girl during a school trip, local health services said Tuesday.

"Neither the girl nor her family had realized she was pregnant, and there were no external signs to show it," a spokesman for the health services said, adding he did not know how many months pregnant the girl had been.

The girl, from Groningen in the north of the country, was on a day out on Tuesday of last week with her classmates where she began to feel violent stomach pains, the spokesman said.

A supervisor thought the pains suspicious and alerted the emergency services.

When ambulance staff arrived they saw the girl was on the point of giving birth and rushed her to a nearby building where she had her baby.

Both "are doing well" in the maternity ward of a Groningen hospital, the spokesman said.

A social worker has been charged with looking after the welfare of the baby, he said, adding that this was standard practice in the Netherlands in such cases.