Sarah Palin flying, driving, lying...

While our focus is on Sarah Palin's wild ride, let's have a look at some puzzling aspects of this tall story.


From ADN, three days after Trig's first appearance:

Some airlines have policies against pregnant women onboard during the last four weeks of pregnancy, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advises against flying after 36 weeks.

This was going to be Palin's last flight anyway, her doctor said.

Alaska Airlines has no such rule and leaves the decision to the woman and her doctor, said spokeswoman Caroline Boren. Palin was very pleasant to the gate agents and flight attendants, as always, Boren said.

"The stage of her pregnancy was not apparent by observation. She did not show any signs of distress," Boren said.

Palin never got big with this pregnancy. She said she didn't try to hide it but didn't feel a need to alert the airline, either.

Is this big enough to be apparent by observation?


OK, before the photo above, taken on April 13, Sarah wasn't big at all:



What a difference a few days make, eh? Please look at the slideshow on the sidebar, it shows how Sarah wasn't very big. I would have thought she was bigger on April 17 than on April 13, but the flight attendants couldn't tell our Sarah was pregnant...


Then we have the drive to Palmer:

They landed in Anchorage around 10:30 p.m. Thursday and an hour later were at the Mat-Su Regional Medical Center in Wasilla. (The ADN didn't know the center is in Palmer?)

If you were driving your 44 year old wife to hospital while she was 8 months pregnant with a vulnerable child, who had experienced some leakage of amniotic fluid and who had contractions while giving a speech over 3000 miles away, a wife who had two previous miscarriages, would you choose a fully equipped hospital 6.8 miles (16 minutes) away from the airport, or would you prefer to drive for over 1 hour to a hospital that doesn't have the facilities for more complicated births to see a doctor who isn't an ob/gyn?

Ozmud offers a good insight into what could have happened:

Labour is not predictable. What would Todd have done if, on an isolated road in the dead of night, his wife had gone into hard labour? How would he have delivered his son? Protected his wife? What provisions did they have on hand? Hot water? Clean blankets? Could Todd have at least washed his hands? Was there light? What would he have used to clamp or cut the umbilical cord? What if the infant, born a month early, had trouble breathing? How would he have kept his son alive long enough for help to arrive? What if Sarah began to hemorrhage?

One would think Todd would have at least arranged for an ambulance to meet them at the airport in Anchorage, providing his wife and unborn child with immediate medical assistance and the safest possible passage on the last leg of what must have been an incredibly tense, gruelling trip for him.

One would think.

It seems to me that Sarah Palin's stage of pregnancy wasn't apparent to anyone, including her husband...
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