Laura Novak revisits my "Tale of Two Babies" post.

Laura bravely wades into perhaps the most controversial story I have ever posted on IM, and discusses the strange "Trig Palin" ear malformation with her friend the neonatologist.

From Laura's blog:

LN: You mentioned the “ear.” Perhaps nothing rocked the Palin-watching blogosphere quite like Gryphen’s Tale of Two Babies post in February of last year.

His discovery of Trig as a newborn with a deformed ear was stunning. I believe this is a tight shot from this photo at the baby shower (same occasion as the right hand photo above.)

And as Gryphen pointed out, the deformed ear is also visible close-up on the Sadie-in-the-kitchen photo.

But the discovery but it led to further speculation that the infant with a cauliflower ear could not possibly be the same baby presented to the world at the Republican National Convention and then later at the presidential debate.

In fact, following that amazing post, the Internet began collectively calling the baby, Ruffles. What’s your initial response?

DOC: I'm not sure what I can add to that excellent Gryphen post other than agree with the general principle that the “ruffled ear” is unlikely to ever look normal.

At first glance, I thought the hole in front of the ear was a preauricular pit which occurs in up to 1% of newborns. It's not particularly associated with Down syndrome and usually doesn't cause any serious problems, besides getting infected.

But then I looked at a close-up of the ear and thought that the hole in front of the ear may actually be the ear canal itself, because it's way too big to be a preauricular pit, which are tiny. What I don’t see is any evidence of a “tragus”. That’s the piece of cartilage that sits in front of the ear canal opening, partially covering it.

LN: I know that you and I both want to delve further into this, but for now, you agree with the assessment of the doctors Gryphen interviewed?

DOC: Yes. There's no way that these small, low set, posteriorly rotated and deformed ears in picture #1 could look relatively normal several months later. But I’m not an ENT and I’d really like to hear what one would say before I’d definitively call these different babies.

My first response to this VERY complimentary article is, "Aww shucks, tweren't nothing."

However my second response is to say thank you Laura, and thank your doctor friend too, for being courageous enough to give this bizarre twist in Sarah Palin's crazy pregnancy and birth story another look.

I have to say that it took me over ten months to determine that I had done enough preparation, and had enough evidence, to present this story.  And EVEN THEN I had to be convinced that it could withstand the scrutiny which we all knew would come once it was posted.

I had hoped that once it was out it would catch fire and have a real impact on the pregnancy story.

But other than the duo "coincidences" of Todd Palin dropping out of the Iron Dog the day the story broke, and Meg Stapleton SUDDENLY quitting as Palin's spokesperson two days later, there really wasn't that much of a response.    But hey, those two incidences don't MEAN anything, now do they?

I had high hopes that Andrew Sullivan might take the ball and run with it, but he was just never sure enough about the subject to take that risk.  I have to say I really could not blame him, it really IS one of the craziest aspects to the whole babygate mess.

So once again I want to thank Laura Novak for looking at this story again with fresh eyes, because even thought I have every confidence that whoever looks at this evidence will reach essentially the same conclusion that I reached, it is nice to have that validated by other people trained to look at evidence with a skeptic's eye.

And before I end this post I should add that we had tried repeatedly to find NEW pictures of "ruffled ear" baby in order to do follow up posts, and were unable to do so.

That is until today.

THIS picture is from Frank Bailey's book, Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin.

Notice anything?

Now the only thing new that we can learn from these pictures is that, since they were taken sometime in May, Palin continued to present THIS baby as Trig at least few more times in public.

It is also my opinion that, since the baby in this picture appears plumper than in the previous photographs, that this was probably a few weeks after the pictures taken at the baby shower and in Palin's kitchen. 

So then the million dollar question remains.  Just when DID Sarah swap the baby pictured above....

....for THIS baby?