Introduction-E

Were prayers said for it also?
Saullu: Yes, prayers were used for those who died. But the prayers wouldn’t be
repeated at the burial site. That’s how it used to be.
Did they have to cut the umbilical cord too?
Saullu: Yes they would. It was probably pulled out. Some pulled out the placenta. Some
are difficult to come out and some women would have to really strain to push it out.
Myself, I never had to do this when I bore my eldest child. How the placenta comes out
at the first birth tends to be the way with following births. I would press around the
abdomen and the placenta would come out, for any baby I helped deliver.
Would the women who had just delivered start doing chores right away?
Saullu: I was quite active after my first deliveries, but not so much in my later ones.
There was a doctor who arrived at Qipisa shortly after I delivered once. He ordered me
to stay in bed for three days and he said he’d be leaving shortly. Soon after he left, I ran
all the way up the hill for I really wanted to watch the ship that was departing. I was
often asked if I could really feel anything at all. If you are not in pain you have no
difficulty moving around but if you are in pain you are not energetic. When I was in
labour, I went to the tidal flats so I could dig clams, and when I was digging, I could feel
my child’s head about to come out. I almost delivered on the beach!
Did your eldest child die when she was an infant?
Saullu: No, she had a younger sibling then.
Was she sick?
Saullu: Yes, she had diarrhea and she could only feed from my breast as she could not
swallow anything else.
She died before her [first] birthday?
Saullu: No, she died when she was probably two years old. We’d start menstruating
only after they had their second birthday. That was often the case. There would be
longer intervals between our children. My mother told me when I had my first child,
that I would not menstruate until after her second birthday. I was scared for a while as
I felt different. It turns out that’s the way it was.
When they were two years old?
Saullu: Yes.
84 Introduction to the Oral Traditions