Hi, I’m Mariah — corporate working mama turned doula mama

Most of the time I feel like my story is one for the books, and while it may feel basic, unfamiliar, or even painfully familiar to you, it is the one that brought us together.

I’m a Washington State native, raised in the South Sound area. I earned my B.A. in Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies in 2012, with a focus on families and communication dynamics — a passion that, a few career pivots later, quietly led me here.

In 2015, I met my husband. A little over a year later we got married, and almost as swiftly, we got pregnant with our oldest, A. That shook our world — mine most of all. At 25, I thought I was ready to be a mom. I’d been a nanny for years, and everyone said I’d be a natural — but no one warned me about the dark, uneven path waiting for me on the other side of labor.

My pregnancy was unremarkable. My water broke at 12:41am, and after a call to the hospital, I was told to come in around 4:30am — only to be sent back home by 6:30. We returned around 8am and were held in an overflow room stocked with extra birth balls and shower chairs, with barely any attention from staff beyond being handed a gown. We’d taken a “one day” hospital birth class, but in the moment, none of it mattered — every resource stayed zipped in my hospital bag because neither of us was calm enough to reach for it. My mom stood there literally holding me up. My husband shrunk into the background, unsure what to do. I didn’t want an epidural, but I ended up getting one anyway. My body wanted to push the moment they had me lay down — I was told to wait. I pushed for roughly two hours. My son was OP, a.k.a. face up — which is why I’d been in back labor the whole time. He latched “great,” they said — but that single check was the only time his latch was evaluated the entire hospital stay. The lactation consultant on rotation didn’t want to wake up. Big mistake. I had no idea that “great” wasn’t actually great. I slept, and slept, for weeks — I was told that was normal. It wasn’t. It was the tie. And more.

My postpartum is where I earned my motherhood wings — the hard way. Before I even left the hospital, I was bloody and bruised from nursing. Lactation support offered nothing. I was sent home and, mostly, left to figure it out. Two weeks in, I had to stop nursing. I couldn’t make it work, no matter how many in-office lactation visits I sat through. In 2017, almost no one was talking about lip and tongue ties. I was told there was no way my son had one — he was transferring milk just fine. A year later, we found out he did.

At nine weeks postpartum, I was diagnosed with mastitis and staph — but only after being failed, first by the MFM nursing staff, then by urgent care. All of it stacked up: a young wife, a new mother, a body and a system that didn’t hold me. It became an 18-month battle with postpartum depression. That battle is what kept my husband and me from trying for another baby for four years. It’s also what pushed me toward massive self-education, fierce self-advocacy, and an online unmedicated birth course.

My second pregnancy was unremarkable too — although “unremarkable” is a funny word for moving homes, renovating a house from the studs, chasing a four-year-old, and growing a baby, all at once. I promised my husband it would be different this time. That I could out-educate the depression, out-prepare it, if I just knew enough — if we both did. I had no idea a different battle was already waiting for me.

But first, I fired my homebirth midwife over a values mismatch (yes — I can help you find and interview the right provider for you) and transferred care at 27 weeks. I ended up birthing my second baby at The Birthing Inn in Tacoma, with a midwife team I can only describe as phenomenal. My husband and I worked through an online, self-paced birth course together — we never actually finished it, for the record, so I don’t recommend cutting it that close — but when labor started, we were calm. Ready. My son went to his grandparents. I zipped up my bag. We went. By 9:20am I was 4 centimeters. By 11:51am, I was holding my daughter, L.

And still — despite the calm pregnancy, the steady labor — I fell right back into the bruising, the pain, the blood of nursing another lip and tongue tied baby. The difference this time was that I had knowledge, and I had help. We had her ties revised. It didn’t spare us from triple feeding, from navigating a formula shortage, from mastitis, or from postpartum depression this time paired with a crippling postpartum anxiety I hadn’t met before.

Two pregnancies. Two labors. Two babies. Two completely different chapters of my life. And out of all of it, here’s what I carry forward, for you:

Self-advocacy. Lip and tongue ties. Lactation — nursing, triple feeding, bottle feeding, formula feeding, exclusive pumping. Late-term provider transfers. Doula support. Online birth education. Postpartum depression and anxiety. Provider search. State and local resources.

I’m not here because birth and postpartum were easy for me. I’m here because they weren’t — and because I don’t want you to walk through it alone the way I so often did.