Marlea’s Pregnancy Story

Aug 1

Hi! I’m Marlea, I'm a birth and postpartum doula and will be partnering with Hannah!

This is my pregnancy journey story!

So In 2019 I found out I was pregnant and overwhelmed with joy, sadly that pregnancy was only a few weeks long and ended in a miscarriage. This made me depressed, and made me desperately wanting to be a Mama. We were “trying but not trying” to get pregnant for almost a year. It was discouraging every month when I found out I wasn’t pregnant.

In the Summer of 2020 I started to mean business. I tracked my ovulation daily by peeing on LH sticks actually multiple times a day. I would upload them on an app to get the exact percentage and glue them on a notebook. I also started to take my temperature every morning. And we were having intercourse everyday or every other day. About a month or 2 of doing this I started to bleed.

On Labor Day, my sister, cousin, and I went to La Bamba and I had a couple mojitos. I felt weird, I’ve been drunk before and I knew it was a different weird. I went home and took a pregnancy test and I saw a small line. I wasn’t completely sure though because they were cheap tests. We went to Walgreens and bought a fancier test and it was positive!!

Remember when I said I started to bleed? Yeah I was still bleeding at this point. And that was very scary because I was afraid of having another miscarriage. I called my doctor and they tried to give me the run around. They said bleeding is normal and I need to wait until at least 8 weeks to come in. I told them I had a previous miscarriage and I need peace of mind that my HCG levels are going up. They told me I could come in for blood work. I went in my manager's office to ask if I could leave early and just started sobbing cause I thought I was having a miscarriage.

I went to my OB for blood work, only to see the phlebotomist that drew the blood. They called me the next day and were like “congratulations you're pregnant!” I said “yes I’m aware, I wanted to make sure the levels are going up and I’m not having a miscarriage”. I knew from my past that I would have to come in multiple times to have a blood drawn to check this, but they did not offer. They just told me they would check again at my 8 week appointment. All I knew to do was to keep peeing on sticks and make sure the line is getting darker. Which they were.

Telling our family! When I had my miscarriage I did not tell anyone. I wanted things to be different this time so I would have support in case something did go wrong. We told my mom I wore a shirt that said “Always read the fine print” then “Im pregnant” was tiny. I wore it all day. We went and ate lunch, and I think we finally pointed it out to her. We went to tell my dad right after that, I think he had covid at the time and we made him read my shirt through his glass door. That night we went and ate with my sister and I wore the shirt to tell them. We told Trent’s family by having my dog Linus wear a big brother bandana.

So 6 long weeks later, I started to get nauseous. I could not eat anything. Nothing helped. I would eat a couple crackers a day and throw them up Every time. I called my doctor and they said they would not prescribe anything until I was seen, but told me to try B6 and unisom. That seemed to help, but I was still throwing up every day.

I had my first appointment a day before my birthday, and I was so nervous. I had to go by myself and I thought I would not be able to handle it if I had a miscarriage. But they did the ultrasound. I saw the baby and everything else was perfect! I was happy and relieved.

At my 12 week appointment I think, I did the genetic testing and blood work to find out the gender. We had a fun gender reveal, My sister hosted it and My husband shot a balloon. We found out it was a boy! We were so happy and surprised, it seems like girls run in our family so we thought for sure it was gonna be a girl. We were ecstatic to be having a baby boy.

The rest of my pregnancy was pretty good. I was still throwing up every day, around 20 weeks it slowed down and I was still nauseous but only threw up about once a week. I ended up losing 15 pounds during my pregnancy, I did not gain weight until my 3rd trimester. Baby was also breached at the 20 week appointment but that was ok.

My sister also threw me the most beautiful baby shower. It was so fancy. It was Winnie the Pooh theme. We had all our friends and family there and we were so blessed with so many gifts!

During this time I started to rethink my birth at the hospital I was at because the C-section rates were so high. It also seemed like a very dark place to me, kinda like there was a big dark cloud over the hospital. I had previous trauma there, but did not want to believe that it was going to affect my birth. My whole family went to the same OB as me and loved them. Everyone I knew had their babies there. At this time I didn’t know of many people that had a home birth. I started to make a birth plan and every Time I had an appointment I would bring in a long list of questions to ask the midwife. I started to question everything. I spoke to my doula and she encouraged me to get other opinions.

I interviewed 3 at home birth midwives. We just could not convince ourselves to spend $4000 when we were on Medicaid and a hospital birth is free. The last midwife I spoke to was very discouraging. Whenever I told her I had painful intercourse she told me “there was nothing wrong with an epidural”. I was so excited about meeting with her I thought she was going to be the one, but the interview just didn’t go well.

We also looked into the birth center. I did all the necessary steps to get into the birth center. At 30 weeks they emailed me and told me I was getting cut from the waiting list. So then I looked into another practice.

I went to another office that is well known for respecting moms choices, they also allow water births. Unfortunately everything seemed to turn me off that day. The drive was so long, which would be okay if I could get the birth I wanted. Whenever I got there I was so hot and uncomfortable. The practitioner I saw only spoke about quarantining and getting a covid vaccine. And that was a no no for me. There was only one more water birth class before my due date. It seemed like things were just going against me.

I gave up on trying to find a new place after that. With working full time and having to request medical records and fax them and wait on call backs it was just getting stressful for me. I was nearing the end of pregnancy and thought I would just stick with the hospital.

I started to get into the mindset of believing I would have a wonderful birth. I continued watching all of Bridget Teylor’s videos on youtube, to make sure I was so prepared.

I finished up my birth plan and took it to a visit with me. I asked the midwife I had that day to look over it with me. She did and changed a few things. She rolled her eyes and acted like my questions were dumb. I can still remember how hot and red my face got. I felt like I was going to cry. She handed my plan to a nurse and said “she has a birth plan, can we scan it” in a very bitchy sarcastic voice. After that appointment I called my doula and was like I do not want her to deliver my baby. I started praying that when I went into labor I would have one of the midwives that I did like.

On our anniversary we went to a popular Italian restaurant and I ate eggplant parmigiana. I was doing all the tips and tricks to help my body get ready for labor.

The end of my pregnancy I was still scheduled to work basically until I had the baby. I was so exhausted, I told my manager on my due date that tomorrow would be my last day.

When I was 40 weeks + 2 days I had my last appointment. They did an ultrasound and said the baby was facing my left hip and probably very long. That day I went home and rested and went on a date to Food Truck Friday and drank a smoothie with dates.

Continued in my Birth Story!

Hannah Ashby

Marlea’s Pregnancy Story

Marlea’s Birth Story (part one)

Hannah’s Pregnancy Story