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.
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.
Most likely Obama Sr. disrespected her in some way, and she wanted to get away from him. Maybe she found out he was a polygamist. There's any number of plausible reasons. She went to the one place outside Hawaii where she had a support network: Seattle.
While travelling with a newborn isn't easy, it's not impossible. It certainly would have been easier to travel with a newborn from Honolulu to Seattle in 1961 than it would be to travel while 8 or 9 months pregnant from Honolulu to Kenya. We're talking about a 6 hour flight (or 10 hours & two flights if she had to connect in LA or SF) vs. a greuling 2-3 day journey that would have involved various forms of primitive transportation.
I don't see how any of this supports the birther argument.