Posted on 09/01/2009 6:10:29 PM PDT by RobinMasters
Don’t know much. (Who does?) My guess is that any mother would be learning how to change a diaper within minutes of returning home from the hospital. Not sure two weeks in hospital was normal even then. More like three to five days? (And BTW in 1961, hardly anybody was breastfeeding. Bottle feeding was the norm.) Bottom line is that I am very suspicious of anyone saying that any mother was clueless about diaper changing three weeks after delivering.
One other thing. In those days, a white woman delivering a black baby was not as accepted as it is today. It was a social stigma. Babys were called molato, or Oreo, and genetics as they were then often produced, although not nice, pinto babies, or those with white and black blotched skin. It is very likely that a baby born in Hawaii that was black with a white mother (called a Haoli) would be look on as trash. Not so in Kenya, a fast exit from Hawaii because of the social implications is not out of the range of possibility, to a very tolerant North West Seattle. It also points out the racially charged atmosphere of the time. Obama Sr is a very black man, and in Hawaii, pure blood Hawaiian was prized (still is), they even have an Island in the chain that only pure blood hawaiians can go to. Race issues on Hawaii were not just black and white, whites on the island were minimally tolerated outside of big cities.
If she delivered in Hawaii, she beat feet out of there asap IMO.
Breastfeeding went out of fashion after WWII and didn’t catch on again till the 70s. She would have been in the minority if she fed the kid the way God intended.
http://www.popline.org/docs/0334/790055.html
Karen Pryor’s book “Breastfeeding Your Baby” was published in 1963 and became the “bible” for mothers wanting to get back to the natural way of feeding. It took a decade or so to really catch on.
Barry 0 most likely was fed from a bottle.
I come from a family of 5 children born from 1950 to 1962, Mom stayed in the hospital for 7-10 days, 2 to 3 weeks for caesarian (sp), and when it changed to 2-3 days, Mom was aghast, they had not had sufficient time to heal before going straight into raising the child. When my oldest sister was born, her mother spent 2 weeks with her to teach her how to care for the baby, help her thru post partum depression, and help around the house. It was not until the late 1990’s that mothers were going home in 2-3 days. And even today, with complications mom will go home, but not baby, which is another ball of wax altogether. Your incorrect about breastfeeding in the 60’s as well, my mother and all her friends breastfed, and were members of the Le Leche League, it was the norm, not the exception. Working mothers would bottle feed, but would express milk in bottles in the evenings, as it was known that important minerals and antibodies are passed to the baby thru breast milk. It is still true today, which is why drug babies are rarely breast fed. I feel that Stanley Ann Dunham was right in line with being clueless about a new baby, and that was when Grandma became invaluable. It was also the time that most young women realized what wonderful people there mothers were, and rightly so. Time frames for arriving in Seattle were about right for a girl who wanted to be out of the clutches of a grandma who knew better, but was not going to tell her what to do. I am sure we all know that behaviour pattern, and also know that they grow up as women, and realize they messed up. Eventually, Stanley sent Obama back to Hawaii for him to attend special school, because like I said before, Off Islanders had a hard time integrating into Hawaiian society. It did not matter what color you were.
Really? You have a source for that? Stunning, if true.
Another issue that I don’t think has been raised here is diapers.
Disposable diapers and wipes didn’t come along till the 70s. Traveling with a baby in cloth diapers would have been very hard, particularly for an inexperienced mother.
I really doubt that Stanley Ann breastfed, but let’s assume she did: those first few weeks, particularly for a first-time mother, is just grueling. The let-down reflex, leaking, feeding on demand, engorgement and very sore breasts would make traveling even more difficult.
Being in Seattle with that baby was a hardship. I want to know what forced her into it — need to get back to the U.S. from Kenya? A Canadian birth close by?
Classes didn’t start till mid-Sept. at U of W, so even if she had to be in Seattle for school, she didn’t need to be there in August.
I read your link and it quoted findings from one (1) doctor.
The Le Leche League formed in 1956 and had one year in 1957 where it declined, but resurged in the 1960’s and 1970’s
http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Ar-Bu/Breastfeeding.html
Excellent points, also add to that the problems of breast feeding in public! A real problem. But, Dunham was a young woman, going to school, her husband went back east to attend harvard, cash was low. Breast Milk was free and calmed the baby. Diapers were an issue that everyone dealt with, laundrys were filled with young mothers with diapers to wash, yard sales were a ready supply of used, clean, cloth diapers. It was economics. Dunham had friends in Seattle as a support group, none in Hawaii, and was an outsider in Kenya. It was a natural progession to go where her friends were, and away from parental influences. She probably stayed with those friends until she got on her feet again, and Obama Sr does not seem the type, to me, to care about anyone but himself, so she was on her own. He did not attend the birth of his son, was a polygamist, being already married by his tribe to a local girl...not the best genetic material IMO.
From your link: “Breastfeeding rates began rising again in the late 1950s and early 1960s.”
I agree. It came back into vogue and numbers “began rising again” about the time Barry 0 hatched.
Your family was apparently part of the resurgence.
But breastfeeding didn’t again gain wide acceptance until the back-to-nature movement in the late 60s, early 70s. Earth mothers and all that.
My post, like yours, was from personal experience. My family and our friends.
I was not born into affluence. I was a lower middle income kid in the Los Angeles Basin, my entire neighborhood was filled with young families, and I watched it every day, I went to PTA meetings with my mom and saw it there, I saw it at grocery stores, movies, restaurants...This is very clear to me. I am not sure what your socio-economic upbringing was, or if your mother was stay at home or a working mom, but it was prevalent in my upbringing. By the way, My grandparents lived in West Seattle, and I visited them often, and it was rampant there as well. The University District, Kent, Renton, Everett, Queen Ann, all bustling with Breast feeding moms. and by the way, the hippy movement started in the early 1960’s, woodstock happend in the Summer of 1969, but the hippy movement is the early 60’s was the beatnik movement, sans Sausalito, the Embarkadero in SF. In the early 1960’s the hippy movement got its air time in the Haight-Ashbury area. Free love, communes, VW Busses...LOL
Obama Sr. wasn’t at Harvard when Stanley Ann landed in Seattle with Barry 0. He was in Hawaii for another year. She was, indeed, on her own.
The working theory, from some who have been close to the purported Kenyan BC that some in Washington have seen, is that the Obama-Dunham “marriage” took place in Kenya in early 1961, Ann and Sr. probably having traveled there (likely by boat) between the winter 1960 and spring 1961 semesters. That would explain the lack of marriage records in Hawaii. Then Sr. returned to Hawaii for school and she stayed (hid out?) in Kenya for the duration of the pregnancy.
There are eyewitness accounts that say she tried to fly back to the U.S. late in the pregnancy but was denied boarding and ultimately gave birth in Mombasa, then flew back as soon as possible afterward. Seattle or Vancouver would have been a stopover, and that would explain her appearance there in Aug. ‘61 and her inexperience. Whether she returned to Hawaii before late 1962 is not known, but she and Obama Sr. apparently never lived together after the baby was born.
You probably already know all that. Just rehashing.
Yep, and I agree with most of what you said.
to whet your appetite, check these out...
Lucas Smith Defense of new birth certificate by WND and Jerome Corsi...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX1DFV0hsPI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCc3Axxd8kU&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdueOWxo518&NR=1
***
Her grandparents were residents in Hawaii, and both died there later on in life. SO it begs to infer that they helped with birth announcements...Birth Registration perhaps...A bit more to chew on:
Clearing the Smoke on Obama’s Eligibility: An Intelligence Investigator’s June 10 Report
“The Territorial Public Health Statistics Act in the 1955 Revised Laws of Hawaii
In the State of Hawaii, back in 1961, there were four different ways to get an “original birth certificate” on record.
BC1. If the birth was attended by a physician or mid wife, ....
BC2. In 1961, if a person was born in Hawaii but not attended by a physician or midwife, then all that was required was that one of the parents send in a birth certificate to be filed. The birth certificate could be filed by mail.
.... there is and was no requirement for a physician or midwife to witness, state or report that the baby was born in Hawaii.
BC3. In 1961, if a person was born in Hawaii but not attended by a physician or midwife, then, up to the first birthday of the child, a “Delayed Certificate” could be filed...
BC4. If a child is born in Hawaii, for whom no physician or mid wife filed a certificate of live birth, and for whom no Delayed Certificate was filed before the first birthday, then a Certificate of Hawaiian Birth could be issued upon testimony of an adult (including the subject person [i.e. the birth child as an adult]) if the Office of the Lieutenant Governor was satisfied that a person was born in Hawaii, provided that the person had attained the age of one year. ...
In 1982, the vital records law was amended to create a fifth kind of “original birth certificate”. Under Act 182 H.B. NO. 3016-82, “Upon application of an adult or the legal parents of a minor child, the director of health shall issue a birth certificate for such adult or minor, provided that the proof has been submitted to the director of health that the legal parents of such individual while living without the Territory or State of Hawaii had declared the Territory or State of Hawaii as their legal residence for at least one year immediately preceding the birth or adoption of such child.”
In this way “state policies and procedures” accommodate even “children born out of State” (this is the actual language of Act 182) with an “original birth certificate on record.”
I think our differing memories have to do with geography. I am older than you and am speaking of my experiences as a parent along with others of my generation. But I’m also speaking of the middle of the country, where the trend may have been later than what you saw on the west coast. Most mothers here were still using bottles in the early 70s.
Definately lower middle income here. No, wait . . . make that lower income, no middle about it. Which was one draw of breastfeeding. Mom gets to eat well and basically feed the kid for free.
I think it more likely that the Mombasa hospital reported the birth to the U.S. Consulate in Kenya, which in turn wired it to Vital Records in Honolulu, which listed it with all other registered births in its weekly column for the local papers. All the info in the newspaper blurb would have come from Ann when she gave info at the hospital.
As for Stanley breastfeeding Obama, its a slam dunk, the video of her friend states she was breastfeeding him, and as you know, breastfeeding babies tend to poop more frequently and the stool is very loose (mustard..LOL)
I have to ammend my income to just over the railroad tracks as well...LOL
Interesting possibility. I still think Grandma and Grandpa put it in the local paper as grandparents. There were very few facts listed.
Consulates don't wire births to State Vital Records.
The images are much better. You do need to believe that WND took photos of the directory from the proper time period, since their is no heading or other dating information in the photos.
Here’s a link to an interesting website, a number of letters of recommendation for obama sr, written in Hawaii in the period in question, and NOT one of them refers to obama sr having a wife and child...scroll down
That's not surprising, even WND's info is indicating that they never lived together, at least after Barry was born. They weren't even on the Island at the same time for more than a few weeks, from early August at least, perhaps even earlier.
I'm completely agnostic as to who BHO's real father is. A bit less agnostic about which foreign country he was born in.
B = Birth Certificate
I = is
R = Required
T = to
H = Honestly
E = Elect
R = Representative
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