Fragile and Perfectly Cracked: A Memoir of Loss and Infertility

By Sophie Wyndham

In 2010 Sophie Wyndham's world was shattered when she had a stillborn son. Five months later she had a miscarriage. This is the raw account of her struggle with loss and infertility, and the changed woman she became through it. Sophie openly and honestly recounts the journey of healing (and ultimately the birth of a daughter), and gives voice to the silent grief experienced by millions of women and their partners. This is a memoir that is uncomfortable to read, because the subject is so uncomfortable. But with 1 in 4 women experiencing the loss of a pregnancy, and many struggling to conceive, it's a subject that needs to be understood and treated with compassion. Sophie's story is hers, but it is only one of millions like her, and reading it will leave you with a clearer picture of the grief carried by these mama's, and how to support and love those who are experiencing the same grief.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sophie Wyndham
• Release date: Jul 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9780986354502

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Fragile & Perfectly Cracked

A memoir of loss and infertility

Sophie Wyndham

Copyright © 2015 Sophie Wyndham

All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents

Finally

2009

2010

2011

2012

Finally

Finally, they put her on my chest, after the forceps, after my horrific labor, my vagina torn and probably forever fucked up, she was finally here, this purple coughing grunting alien with matted down hair, and a giant head, covered in gloop. For the first seconds I didn’t want to touch her. She was so wet and gooey, and had all these, I swear to God, scales, and then they started drying her off, and she grunted more, and then nothing mattered. The world stopped. I had met my heart, my soulmate, the love of my life. I had made this amazing scaly purple creature. Baked her in my tummy, carried her, nourished her, brought her forth out of my body, faced down death and the darkest parts of me through the 25 hour ordeal. Went until I couldn’t go anymore. And then went more, another step, (just one more, somebody let me rest, please, but no rest, no rest to be had, can’t stop here, so close, her head is right there, keep pushing, I can’t push again, yes, you have to) because what choice did I have? She needed to come out. And come out she did. My heart, living and breathing here next to me…

2009

Moment:

Leaving the doctor’s office in the spring. May, 2009. Going in to get a checkup to get the ok from the Ob/Gyn to go off the pill and start to work at making a baby. Because this is what responsible people do, and we are nothing if not responsible. Well, at least I am. J is sort of of a pothead but his yin balances out my type-A-personality yang. Going back to the car I let him hold the door open for me. If I’m going to get pregnant I’m going to need to get used to people doing things for me, and quit being so independent. We smile at each other. Next year, we think. Next year we could have a baby in our arms. I will go off the pill after my next cycle. We are excited. We don’t know yet what will come. We are naive. And cute. I look back with equal amounts of nostalgia and disgust at those people. They are so silly, I think. So innocent and untouched.

2010

It’s sometime around February. Sitting in the living room on a Saturday morning, reading old magazines before I recycle them. The way childless people do. Ahh, coffee, magazines, NPR. So civilized. Maybe the New Yorker or something equally cultural. Have you heard that the LA Choral Artists commissioned a new Morten Lauridsen piece? Oh, such a wonderful composer. I was thinking about checking out the new exhibit at the Cloisters museum; illuminated manuscripts, medieval, very historic.

A magazine article about pregnancy. I know nothing about getting pregnant at this point other than I’ve been off the pill for 8 months, and we should have sex around 2 weeks before my period is due. I don’t know about the world of conception yet. The temping. The Ovulation Predictor Kits. I haven’t yet downloaded the Fertility Friend app.

If you’re under 35 and have been trying for a year without getting pregnant, see a doctor, the magazine says. Over 35, wait 6 months. I’m 33 and we’ve been trying for eight months. I throw the magazine aside. I don’t need to worry about that, I think. So nonchalant.

I often imagine what it will be like when I do get pregnant. How I will tell J. I have been buying pregnancy tests at the grocery store the past few months, and taking them immediately in the public restroom. They are all negative. I throw them away before I go home because I don’t want J to see that I’ve been testing like this. It’s obsessive, he will say. It will happen when it happens. Spoken like someone who has never really tried to get pregnant.

Several months later. Memorial Day weekend. I have a series of photos I took that weekend when I was home alone and trying new make up. I look at them now. I am so young. I look so young. When did I ever look that young, I wonder.

And then it finally happens a week later, and when it does it stuns me, as it always does. I have an extra test. He’s been grumpy all morning, and we’ve been pseudo-fighting. I don’t know my cycle that well yet. I haven’t yet become intimately familiar with my luteal phase. But I think I might be slightly late. Maybe it should have come yesterday? In the middle of the morning, around 11, I take out my extra test, just for shits and giggles. I go back to the bathroom, pee, and put the test down on the tub.

And then. Then then then.

A line. Holy shit, a line. Is that a line? Jesus, that’s a line.

I go back to my desk. I sit there looking at my computer. Emails come emails go. I’m pregnant. There’s a baby in there.

I walk out to the living room.

Something’s happened, I say. He looks up, expecting bad news. I seem to be pregnant, I say. I show him the test. He looks like he doesn’t believe it. He goes to the grocery store to buy another test. He brings home our favorite root beer to toast our baby. I pee on that test. Positive. I call the doctor because that’s what I think you should do. I pee there. More positives. They take blood. I seem to be pregnant, I say.

I’m hesitant in saying it, but I want to shout it to everyone. I’m pregnant, you guys! I’m now one of the Chosen Ones! I get to make a baby and love it and care for it and watch it grow, and oh my god it’s going to be awesome. On the way home from the doctor we stop at the bookstore and buy the What to Expect books. I start reading them because honestly, I have no idea what to expect. I’m an only child. So is J. Never been around kids. Have no idea what’s going to happen other than what I can remember from 10th grade health class, where I nearly lost it when we had to watch a video of a C-Section.

I call my best friend in London. That’s great, but it’s still early days, he says. I think, he’s a downer. I mean, just don’t go telling everyone until around 12 weeks, he says. Screw that, I’m pregnant. If something did happen, I’d want people to know. I’m pregnant I’m pregnant I’m pregnant! I’m blissfully pregnant. Suddenly I don’t need these dozens of shoes anymore. I don’t need this extra make up. I just need my baby, making me glow.

Baby and I glow together. All