I got an email this morning from FOTM reader Dave McMullen, asking why there aren’t baby pictures of Obama’s two daughters, Malia and Sasha.
Wikipedia says “Barack and Michelle Obama have two daughters: Malia Ann, born on July 4, 1998, and Natasha (known as Sasha), born on June 10, 2001.“
So I did a Google Image search for Obama’s daughters. I couldn’t find any baby pics of Malia or Sasha; neither could Dave.
The youngest-looking pic of the girls I found (see below) was in an article extolling Michelle Obama, dated August 20, 2007, on the website Afrobella. The pic is undated. If we go by the date of the Afrobella article, Malia would be 9 years old and Sasha would be 6 years old.
In contrast, Dave found a website with a pic of Laura Bush, wife of President George W. Bush, holding their two-month-old twins, Jenna and Barbara.
I have seen pics of Barack and Michelle’s wedding, like this one below, but none of Michelle pregnant with child.
Then I went on the website Ancestry.com, and searched for birth records of Malia Obama, b. 1998, and Natasha Obama, b. 2001. These are the results:
In other words, Ancestry.com has no birth records for Malia or Natasha Obama.
Then I paid $9.95 for a trial membership in GenealogyBank.com so that I can search that website for the Obama girls’ birth records.
Below is a screenshot I took from genealogybank.com of the result of my search for Malia Obama. I’ve circled in read the date and time when I accessed the website. Click the image below to enlarge.
As you can see in above, the only thing genealogybank.com has in its newspaper archives on Malia Obama is an article by Sen. Obama titled “Progress on campaign finance reform,” in the Chicago newspaper Hyde Park Herald of August 26, 1998, in which Obama (presumably) mentioned Malia. Here’s the newspaper clip (the words are rather blurry):
Below is a screenshot I took from genealogybank.com of the result of my search for Natasha Obama. I’ve circled in read the date and time when I accessed the website. Click the image below to enlarge.
The only thing genealogybank.com has on Natasha Obama is an article in CHyde Park Herald of July 4, 2001, again by Sen. Obama titled “Tallying wins and losses in Springfield Springfield report,” in which he wrote “The newest edition to the Obama family — Natasha — was born on June 10th, and Michelle and I have been busy changing diapers.” Click image below to enlarge.
In other words, I couldn’t find any birth records of either Malia Obama or Natasha Obama on either ancestry.com or genealogybank.com.
The same Wikipediaentry I had referenced at the beginning of this post states that Malia and Natasha Obama “were both delivered by their parents’ friend Dr. Anita Blanchard at University of Chicago Medical Center.”
Wikipedia’s source of that assertion is an article of Jodi Kantor titled “Obama’s Friends Form Strategy to Stay Close,” in The New York Times of December 13, 2008. The article is about a group of Obama’s closest friends in Chicago, among whom are Valerie Jarrett (now Obama’s senior White House adviser) and a black man named Martin Nesbitt who is now a real estate estate. Nesbitt’s wife is Dr. Anita Blanchard.
Alas, the NYT article does NOT say that Dr. Blanchard had delivered Obama’s daughters. Instead, what the article says is “Mr. Nesbitt’s wife, Dr. Anita Blanchard, delivered nearly all the children [of the group of Obama's close friends in Chicago], and the adults became their godparents.”
If anyone can find baby pictures and birth records of Malia Obama and/or Natasha Obama, please let me know!
H/t FOTM’s Dave McMullen
~Eowyn
