“What if we could make just one of these bills go away for other women?”
The Early Pregnancy Loss Association is a non-profit founded by Ashbrook alum Emily Carrington. After experiencing two miscarriages in 2014, Emily became aware of the hushed culture surrounding early pregnancy loss. As she grieved the loss of her children, she noticed that this feeling of isolation was only increased because of lack of resources available for women and families grieving early pregnancy loss. While paying miscarriage-related medical bills in January of 2015, Emily started to work on a simple idea: “What if we could make just one of these bills go away for other women?”
Where are you from and how did you end up at Ashbrook? I grew up in Orville, Ohio—just down the road from Ashland. My parents are both alums, so it was the one place I wasn’t going to go. But it ended up being the only place I applied to. My parents told me that I really needed to go to a small liberal arts college where I could explore all of my whims. Going to a place with a lot of options—a liberal arts education—was a priority for me. That is a good thing when you are 17 going on 18. I thought I wanted to fashion and art or be a press secretary to the President—I was kind of all over the place.
As a freshman, I was a communications major and was not an Ashbrook Scholar. I was in the Honors Program and was drawn to the Ashbrook Scholars that lived on my floor. The conversations the Ashbrook Scholars were having, the way they were living their lives, and the way they talked about their classes were all really intriguing to me. That is what pulled me in. By the spring of my freshman year, I decided to apply for Ashbrook. Everything felt right, and I got to go to one luncheon that year.
Then in my sophomore year I caught up by taking 101 and 102 at the same time and kind of came in with that freshman cohort. After hearing Schramm talk at the Welcome Back meeting in the fall, I remember telling a friend, “This is where I belong.” And within a couple weeks I went from being a political science minor to a political science major and found myself at home with the Ashbrook Scholars. It was a decision I never regretted.
When did you come to AU and when did you become an Ashbrook Scholar? My freshman year was the fall of 2005. I became a Scholar in 2006, and I graduated in 2009.
Tell me about meeting Adam. We had become friends. He was a couple years older than me. The year we started dating, he had taken a semester off to do an internship, so he had a semester tagged on to the end of his college career. He was a December graduate in 2007. He was still hanging around after his friends graduated and I was a junior. We were taking Dr. Foster’s Western Political Thought I class—lots of Plato and Aristotle. He read my papers.
I think he was a little oblivious at first. We’d go to lunch afterward and talk a lot more. My friends knew what was going on, so we rearranged seats so I would be sitting by him. He was still kind of oblivious. He ended up figuring it out pretty quickly. We started dating at the end of September or early October while we were taking that class together.
I was glad he had hung around. I knew of him. I remember he had been a poster-child on an ad for Ashland and Ashbrook, and it was laying around at home. My mom said, “What about this boy?” and I said, “Oh, no, that is Adam Carrington!”
Ashbrook brought us together. He was a very good student. He would be up on the 8th floor of the library torturing those of us who had waited until the 11th hour to work on our papers, and he would just be visiting, because, of course, his papers were finished. That made him a good proofreader.
What made you want to start the Early Pregnancy Loss Association (EPLA)? Starting a non-profit wasn’t something I had ever though about. There are two ways I can come at how I got here—how I landed there professionally, and how we got there personally.
When I graduated, I wasn’t as clear as Adam was on what the next step for us would be. He was going to graduate school at Baylor where he earned his PhD, and that was absolutely the right thing. While we were there I earned a Master’s in Museum Studies. I thought that I had found my groove and that was where I was supposed to be again. I loved it and really enjoyed the work I was doing.
When we were moving to Hillsdale in 2014 I really felt like it was time for me to be at home. We were going to start a family. I was pretty settled that everything was coming together that way. There aren’t a lot of museums or urban opportunities in Hillsdale, Michigan. It was pretty clear that when Hillsdale was the right move for Adam’s career that my career was going to look different. I didn’t really want to drive in to Ann Arbor or Detroit to keep working in the museum field, so I set that aside for a minute. We really thought it was God’s timing, and it was, but not in the way we thought it was.
About three months before we were to move to Hillsdale, I found out I was pregnant with our first baby. About 3 weeks before we were to move to Hillsdale, we found out that baby had died in what was called a missed miscarriage at 12 weeks.
I look back at that May and it was wild. We were grieving that loss. We were packing our apartment. We were saying goodbye to five years. We were celebrating graduation and my last day of work. It was a huge month of awards, pomp and circumstance, dinners, and parties for both of us—all with this grief underneath. We landed in Hillsdale. The summer is a little rough, but we pick ourselves back up.
As the semester starts, I find out that I’m pregnant again. And we just kind of shook it off and thought it would be fine. Miscarriages happen. I’m young. It’s fine. And around the same time at 12 weeks we found out that the baby had passed.
The first time we had elected to have a D&C, which is a surgery to remove the already passed baby. This time we chose to go through a natural miscarriage.
It all sort of culminated about six weeks after I finally completed the miscarriage. We received a bill. The first miscarriage was very expensive, which we anticipated, plus we were young and didn’t have any other medical expenses so it was fine. I had had surgery and I expected the medical bills even though they were ridiculous. The second time I did not have surgery, and I got a bill about six weeks later that was about $90, which was one of the smaller bills we had gotten that year, and I was just annoyed.
I remember going to lunch with Adam at the Coffee Cup Diner, and I said, “I just want these to go away. If we had all the money in the world, I would just call hospitals and pay these for other women.” Adam reminded me that we indeed did not have all the money in the world—we lived on the salary of one faculty member, we lived in a single income household, and we owned a house. That lunch was a crux. I remember just seeing a vision of these bills just going away, of not even coming in the mail. Unfortunately, that’s not as administratively as possible as I want it to be. It really kept growing from there.
That Christmas I really wanted to make a donation in memory of the babies we had lost, and really struggled to find a place that specifically helped women suffering miscarriage. I even asked my doula, “Is there a non-profit out there?” And now I know there were some, but they were hard to find. I had even talked to a nurse from the Chicago area that my sister connected me with who had offered some support. I just became aware that there isn’t much out there. I ended up making a small donation to the March of Dimes.
That winter I was having a deep existential crisis, because I thought I was going to stay home with kids, and I didn’t have kids. I’m now a housewife, which is lovely, but also wondering, “What am I doing?” I was suffering grief and experiencing a Michigan winter for the first time. That slowly led to talking to other women about it—with that guiding question of, “What if we could pay bills for other women?” We started to meet and ask, “What is needed for other people’s experiences?” and it all started to layer.
What all does EPLA do now? We have our educational resources. Those are online and in printed form. That is where we started. I walked out of the doctor’s office not knowing what a missed miscarriage was. Education has been our leader. It’s really basic, but having knowledge and trying to keep women off Google, so they can have those words and terms to have conversations with their doctors and then make decisions.
We also have a blog and a podcast that support that educational component—though those are also used to tell the stories of women, which I think is also a service we offer to women and families. Giving people a chance to tell their stories was incredibly healing for me.
We also have our miscarriage care kits. These are really where the rubber meets the road. They formed accidentally as we were meeting the needs of our friends. We thought that this was something that we needed to systematize. We have small and large miscarriage care kits. They both have educational items, some consumable comfort items like tea, a notebook, pen, bookmark, a memorial blanket that people sew, knit, or crochet for us, as well as sanitary items.
The large kits are hard to talk about, but they’re good. They’re what we need to talk about. They are intended for a home miscarriage. Even after having my own miscarriage, I didn’t understand that my natural miscarriage ended up being more like the live births of my children years later than it was like a heavy period, like it was described to me. We were completely underprepared with the proper sanitary supplies and the tissue and body retrieval supplies. These kits really meet women in that critical and rough moment. We think that adds dignity to her life and her experience.
We have distributed 123 of the large kits and over 900 of the small kits in 34 states this year. We will send those out Priority shipping for anyone who requests them online. We also will ship them around the country for doctors, nurses, and doulas to distribute.
The last service we have is the medical bill pay. This is only through Hillsdale Hospital at this point as our pilot program. We provide up to $500 per patient in medical, miscarriage related expenses. These can be hard to code and hard to see, but if the diagnosis is a miscarriage, then all of the associated expenses like emergency room, scans, et cetera, are eligible. Miscarriage doesn’t tend to happen in labor and delivery. It is a pre-20 week loss. So, collecting all of that is a little difficult. We cover up to $500 after insurance and all aid is applied. We work directly with the financial office to make that possible. We’re really excited to be able to finally offer that. And Hillsdale is a community that really needs that kind of support.
How can people get involved with EPLA? We need so much support. Our vision is that nobody suffers miscarriage alone. Right now we are riding on the backs of volunteers as most non-profits are.
One easy way to support us is to find us on Facebook. Find our podcast. Find our blog. Engage and share with those. Awareness is so important. If you have a friend or family member suffering from miscarriage, please go to our website. We are not the front lines. Most of our kits are distributed through friends and family members—be that connecting point.
Finally, of course, financial support is so crucial to our mission. We are completely donation driven. We are amazed at what we have been able to do, but individual donations are how we get it done. There are multiple ways to give on our website. We have care kit sponsorships available. You get a nice little card for that. These are a great way to donate in the memory of a little one. We also have recurring monthly giving as well as one-time gifts.
We are entering our giving season as everyone is. We are at a crucial time right now. We are doing really well at meeting the needs of people who need it, but we need to grow and get to that next level. If we want to keep meeting those needs, we need kit sponsors and recurring donations. We really try to operate with minimal overhead. All of us lead with service, but we really need that support right now.
Would you like to say anything to your fellow Ashbrook alums? I think we all know this, but our time at Ashland and Ashbrook was very important and formative. I have been thankful for not just that time, but the time since. I am thankful for the community that has been built and is there—especially in the last six months as we have returned there. It has felt like home. It is good and a good place. I just want to thank all of them for being who they are and encourage everyone to stay connected, because it is a very good thing. And I know we all know that.