They were all brought up by three witchey-women of aunts who were so scared of men that they would run and hide in the sheep pen if anybody but their family was coming along the road.
As if it wasn't the men that should be running from them.

The child is turning somersaults in her belly. Her face is hot as a coal and her legs throb and the swollen flesh in between them - the lips the child must soon part to get out - is a scalding sack of pain. Her mother would have known what to do about that, she would have known which leaves to mash to make a soothing poultice.
At the thought of her mother such misery overcomes her that she wants to kick somebody.

This is acute pain. It will become chronic. Chronic means that it will be permanent but perhaps not constant. It may also mean that you won't die of it. You won't get free of it, but you won't die of it. You won't feel it every minute, but you won't spend many days without it. And you'll learn some tricks to dull it or banish it, trying not to end up destroying what you incurred this pain to get. It isn't his fault. He's still an innocent or a savage, who doesn't know there's a pain so durable in the world. Say to yourself, You lose them anyway. They grow up. For a mother there's always waiting this private slightly ridiculous desolation. They'll forget this time, in one way or another they'll disown you. Or hang around till you don't know what to do about them, the way Brian has.
And still, what pain. To carry along and get used to until it's only the past she's grieving for and not any possible present.