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As Kevin Federline continues to spend most of his limited energies lately developing a niche acting career in which he improvises a few lines of dialogue before finding himself on the receiving end of a violent, audience-pleasing act, Britney Spears has been flying suspiciously below the radar. Unlike the arrival of the first, slippery little addition to their household, Sean Preston's younger sibling has yet to surface on the cover of a single celebrity glossy—surprisingly, not even in a telephoto shot of a sidewalk faceplant after the brave, little tyke pulled the short straw in a competition for mom's grip, losing to two Venti Frappucinos and a set of Mini Cooper car keys. There hasn't even been a consensus yet reached on the official official gender or name of the child, and the baby's parents seem perfectly happy to ensure that the youngest Federline remains swaddled in mystery:

It was widely reported that on Sept. 12, Spears gave birth to a baby boy that she named Sutton Pierce. Spears has not confirmed those reports, and pics of little Sutton have yet to surface. [...]

The rumors gained traction when Federline appeared on a radio show and refused to answer questions about the baby's name or gender. "Isn't that strange when you hear that, when you have a child and people tell you the sex is a different one," the DJ asked Federline. He replied: "Yeah it's crazy. Well it's even crazier when people are telling me my child's name."

UPDATE: Updates after the jump:

Buzz about the baby's sex grew louder after a report that Spears was photographed buying pink baby clothes at Planet Blue in Malibu — but her bodyguard confiscated the film.

Cynics might accuse Britney and Kevin of having concocted their own, Malibu Hillbilly version of the Suri Cruise saga, in the hopes of whipping up an information-starved public into another mouth-foaming frenzy until a smartypants magazine like Vanity Fair throws gobs of cash at them for the exclusive cover portrait of blissful Mom, baby brother, and the unmasked, mystery baby poking its adorable head out of daddy K-Fed's XXL Tommy Hilfiger windbreaker. Then again, this might also just be their coy way of covering up for the fact that they haven't seen the kid since they accidentally left it in a Circle K restroom on the way to Vegas four days after its birth.

UPDATE: TMZ has obtained a copy of the birth certificate—it was a boy after all, not named Sutton Pierce, however, but Jayden James Federline. We can't wait for the first photos of JJ-Fed, decked out in the jauntiest pink onesies Planet Blue has to offer.

UPDATE 2: The NY Daily News' Ben "Gatecrasher" Widdicombe tied a Federline to a chair and shined a harsh light into her eyes until she cracked with the Jayden secret back on Sunday.