A Bit of a New Direction

Almost exactly nine months ago, I woke up one morning very pissed off. Something as plain as the hand in front of my eyes was being ignored by the main stream media to a degree I could not fathom.

And - since it occurred to me this morning - that nine months (rather incredibly) is the length of the average pregnancy, I thought it might be interesting to reflect this morning, on just how this "pregnancy" has gone.

Let's return to September 13, 2008, the day I launched the website. (The blog came a few days later.) It had been almost two weeks since John McCain had announced Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, and the initial hysterical joy over the announcement, even among the loyal base, was beginning to erode just a bit. The Charles Gibson interview on the 11th, while not the catastrophe that the Couric interview on September 24th would become, had certainly not not been a smashing success, either. Palin came across as vague, uninformed, and rather ineffective. She was noted most often for saying "Charlie" a lot. A real lot.

In other venues, questions about Palin's ethics, mostly vis a vis "Troopergate" (but including other issues as well) continued to dog the campaign. And of course, what has now been called "Babygate," simply would not die.

As I have said previously, my initial interest in the story had nothing to do with Palin or her politics. As a long time childbirth educator and author, I had always had a "pet peeve:" media misrepresentation of childbirth. Overall, books, movies and TV shows present birth in one of two ways: either impossibly sanitary and easy or staggeringly dangerous. Babies either fall out or die; in birth fiction, there seems often to be no middle ground, and believing either extreme does not help women have happy safe births.

My initial assumption upon hearing Palin's story of Trig's birth was that some male reporter had simply gotten the facts wrong because, of course, no experienced mother of four would get on an airplane, leaking amniotic fluid, eight months pregnant. Just didn't happen. Period.

I've said this before but it bears repeating: birth is not a tidy process. The Governor of Alaska did not risk having to lie down in the middle of an airplane aisle, rip off her panty hose, spread her legs, and push a baby out in a puddle of blood, mucous, amniotic fluid, and, quite possibly, either her own excrement or the baby's. If she were in fact leaking amniotic fluid, she knew before she got on the airplane to fly a total of more than eight hours, that this was a very real possibility. And it is because no one would confront her with this graphic and basic reality back in early September we are here today.

To this day, the only truly concrete statement from either of the Palins as to why Sarah made this choice has come from Todd: "You can't have a fish picker [commercial fisherman] from Texas." Good Lord. Which is more absurd, that anyone ever believed this lame explanation or that people apparently still do?

I knew as soon as I realized that Palin was sticking by this nonsensical version of events that there was a lie somewhere. I have never once wavered from that conviction in nine months. I wasn't sure exactly what, where, or why, but I knew it was a lie. I also could never put together in my mind why so few other people - smart people who, while perhaps not knowing quite as much about childbirth as I do, but who nevertheless have a good basic understanding - did not come out and say, unequivocally and simply, "This birth story does not pass any sort of credible scrutiny. We have a right to ask why. And these questions have nothing to do with Palin's daughter."

Nine months is a long time. Women who became pregnant when I started this website and blog are now having their babies. When I chose to begin collating the information about Palin's pregnancy (and initially, my endeavor was to be nothing more than a repository of documents, photos, and facts that at the time were spread all over the Internet) I did not dream it would be necessary even up until the point of the election, some seven weeks later. The idea that I would still be thinking about Sarah Palin's uterus nine MONTHS later would have nauseated me.

My good friend Gryphen at Immoral Minority said to me recently: Audrey, you don't have to prove anything else. You have proved that Sarah Palin was never pregnant. The problem now is getting people to listen. While I am not 100% sure he is right, I know in my heart that it's close.

So where are we going from here? First, look to this blog for much more frequent and probably shorter posts. When I started the blog, Trig Palin (based on his announced birth date) was approximately four and half months old. Now, he is 15 months old. Although I know there is still information out there for us to find, the plain fact is that it is becoming increasingly difficult. PD posts, while still mostly focusing on the central question of "Babygate," will begin delving into other areas of comment and research direction, often directly related to Palin's overall credibility. After all the blog is called "Palin Deceptions."

Secondly, we are revamping the website, something that has fallen horribly by the wayside as this blog has become the core of the endeavor. Very soon, we are opening a new area of the site, which will, in easy-to-use "calendar" fashion, have clickable links to many many days of Palin's late "pregnancy" with the associated photos. I still find myself astonished when I look at some of the photos, that she has gotten away with absurd lie for so long. When the photos - event after event of photos - are viewed in sequence it becomes laughable.

Look also for posts from others - members of the wonderful research team that have done so much to bring this story to the fore - as well as possibly "guest" posts by long time readers.

And... just as a closing statement... I know many readers have been curious about statements made on other blogs about icebergs and huge revelations and waves crashing onto the shore. (Well, maybe not waves...) Regardless, IS this story going to be over soon?

I think it may be. I think this baby is going to be born soon, and then we can all send a shower gift, and go home.