My Miscarriage After My 32nd Birthday: "Are you okay?"

As a mother and co-parent, I have found it extremely difficult to "share" my children. It's not because I don't trust their father or his family, but because I've only had to share them for two years. The feeling is still new to me. I'm still adjusting to holidays and nights without them. Sometimes, I'll still wake up and feel them in the house and won't realize they're not home until I get to their rooms and see empty beds. Before our divorce, our agreement was 70/30 which meant I had them 70% of the time. Before that, their father and I were together and I was 100% in their lives. I went from being their number one provider to only having "access" to 50% of their lives (with our new custody agreement).

I've never really gone more than a few days without seeing them and even then, I'm a wreck waiting for them to get home. I still question when it will get easier, but right now, it's breaking me. The kids will be leaving in the morning to travel with their father and support him in a family emergency. I couldn't...I would never...say no to my children supporting and being with their father during a life changing moment, however, it doesn't make my time away from them any less painful.

Because on top of anticipating to be without them for almost a week, it's during a time when I needed my children and their love the most...because this week, I lost a baby.

When I was 17, I miscarried in my high school bathroom. And almost exactly 15 years later, I miscarried in the bathroom of the high school where I teach. When I was 17, I kept it quiet and dealt with it alone. I attempted to go work that evening. I cried in the back seat of my best friend's mom's car.

At 32, I tried to go back to work, but couldn't stay. I'm even going through the motions now. I lack focus because all I can think about is how I failed my husband. How my body betrayed me. I cried in the staff lounge in the office. I'm swallowing tears now as I attempt to seclude myself with headphones in the back of a class where students prepare speeches for a class I don't teach.

While the world goes on, I'm frozen in the loss of my baby.

I'm pained by the pending absence of my two children for so long because the truth is, right now, their dad might need them more than me. And moms...we are superhuman...we have super strength...we are iron...and right now, that's who I have to be.

I wasn't going to share this with anyone, I was going to let it be something my husband and I carried with us, but I don't want it to destroy me or the love we have. It's also important that his strength is shared. He's without a doubt, the best man I've ever met. When I was 17, the father of my baby refused to acknowledge more of what was happened. This week, those fears came back to me. I was afraid he would blame me for losing his baby. I was afraid he wouldn't trust me to continue trying to conceive. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to carry his child. What if this man who sacrificed his idea of a family, to embrace the family I had already made, wouldn't be able to have his own child because of me?

I'd be lying if I said I still didn't have those fears. My husband has been so supportive. Allowing me to feel my emotions while daily, "As long as I have you and the kids, I will always be happy with my life," he's constantly reassuring me that "it's okay." Such a simple phrase, but it consoles me to see the honesty in his eyes. That yes, it is okay.

For a handful of days he and I lived on this silent high where we planned the next 9 months out, talked about rearranging our room to be a nursery, pushed back plans to move, looked up OBGYNs, and talked about how to share the news. We never got to tell anyone. We never got to share it with the kids. I went from days of a natural euphoria to one day starting to bleed, a negative test (after 6 positives), and a silent personal hell.

I'm functioning. I'm going through the motions, but I end up at work and wonder how I got there because the whole ride all I can think about it how I've failed. How I need my kids to tackle me in love piles and Maliya to refuse to let my arm go, but now I won't have that for almost a week. In the moments when all I need is to be reminded that I am a good mom, my "motherhood" role will be across the country.

I'm "ok," if okay is an emotion. If okay is a state of being, that's what I am right now.

I know there is greater, I know there is light after this, I know the sayings, but right now, the best I can be is...okay.