"And how are . . . Mummy's stitches?" This, I was slightly thrown by. I knew my mother had had forty-two stitches after the birth, and that she was washing the stitches every day with warm salty water--she made me go and get the warm salty water--but she hadn't passed on much more information about her vagina than that. I knew from Spiritual Midwifery (Ina May Gaskin, Book Pub Co., 1977) that postpartum women were often loath to share the details of their births with the virgins of the tribe, so I wasn't unduly concerned about it. Still, I did have some info, and I was going to share it."