I am surprised that nobody caught that. After pondering it a bit. If Ann had delivered in Kenya or Hawaii, she had a recuperating period (In those days, up to 2 weeks), where the hospital too care of diapers, then home to Grandma, whether in Kenya or Hawaii. It was only after leaving those safe confines to continue school (speculation on my part), that she then had to change the baby boy that was called Barry. I am sure that she breast fed from birth, so knew how to do that...
What say you?
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.