When she found out it was because she was pregnant again, things became even worse. “All of a sudden, people wouldn’t talk to me,” she said. “It was very weird. Like the platoon commander who got after me for being fat, he wouldn’t look me in the eye anymore. He wouldn’t talk to me. He would pretend I didn’t exist.”

Koday left the Marines in early 2013, after her daughter was born, and is now studying computer science. The benefits of being a Marine were no longer worth the sacrifices she had to make as a woman and mom.

For Kelsey Dunlevy, seeing her fellow Marines punished for being pregnant was enough to make her leave the Corps. She and her husband, also a former Marine, decided to wait to have children due to the difficulty of being military parents. But witnessing other women suffer was enough for her to call it quits in 2009.

Near the end of her time in service, Dunlevy said she found herself comforting an 8-month-pregnant sergeant in her platoon who was on the verge of tears because fellow Marines had harassed her for leaving work 30 minutes early. She said she saw the most negative attitudes from other Marines when women in the group became pregnant or struggled to meet physical fitness requirements within six months of giving birth.

"In my opinion, it takes at least a year to get back to normal," said Dunlevy. "There’s no way I would have been able to put up with the attitudes from my male Marines and also get back to that healthy weight in a healthy manner."