For families experiencing pregnancy loss, the emotional toll can be devastating. But for many, the grief is compounded by another unexpected burden: medical bills totaling tens of thousands of dollars. And in some cases, the cost of losing a pregnancy can exceed the cost of delivering a healthy baby.
"Motherhood for me has looked like a lot of holding the joy of what it means to be a mom, while also the grief of really mourning this dream that I had for motherhood," said Ashley LeMieux, who knows this reality all too well.
In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic was shutting down the world, LeMieux was pregnant with a baby boy when she developed sepsis, a life-threatening medical emergency. She ultimately lost her son, delivering him late into her second trimester.
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First came the overwhelming grief. Then came something she never expected: $130,000 in medical bills.
"How is that possible?" LeMieux recalled asking. "And it's something that I had to do in order to save my life."
She fought to have the expenses covered and ultimately succeeded.
Two years later, LeMieux welcomed a baby girl.
"Having her enter into our family was just the biggest miraculous, happiest thing that has ever happened to me," she said.
Unlike her previous pregnancy, LeMieux said she never saw a bill for her daughter's birth. Then, last year, she learned she was pregnant with another boy. Weeks into her second trimester, doctors discovered he no longer had a heartbeat. Once again, LeMieux faced the devastating loss of a child. And once again, she found herself fighting over medical expenses.
Even before LeMieux could begin processing the loss, she said she was receiving calls about how much her medical care would cost.
"The hospital was calling saying we don't accept your insurance, and then our health share was saying we need you to go find somewhere cheaper to deliver the baby," she recalled.
According to LeMieux, her doctor and hospital had already been approved for coverage before her pregnancy status changed. But when she arrived at the hospital to deliver her son, she said a clerk asked for her credit card and charged her nearly $20,000 upfront.
"I felt like a deer in the headlights," she said. "I'm just crying because of what's about to happen, and then pulling out your credit card to pay for this horrific, traumatic event in your life."
That payment was only the beginning. LeMieux said the total cost of her care ultimately reached roughly three times the initial charge.
"Every time I would get the mail, and there would be a new bill, it's just this reminder of what had happened," she said. "And you're trying to move forward and grieve, and then it's like someone just punches you in the gut."
LeMieux turned to social media to share her experience, posting about the financial burden of delivering a baby she would never bring home. As her story spread, she discovered she was far from alone. Other women began sharing their own medical bills following pregnancy loss with her, with amounts ranging from hundreds of dollars to more than $100,000.
On Tik Tok, one woman shared receiving a bill totaling $101,560.98. Another shared a $15,430.15 bill, saying it was more than she had paid for a live birth. A third reported being billed $60,051.50 for a stillbirth. Others described continuing to receive bills after paying the hospital or receiving charges for procedures without detailed explanations.
The experiences highlight a troubling reality for families navigating pregnancy loss: the cost of medical care can be difficult to predict, even when patients have arranged coverage in advance. Roughly one million pregnancies end in the first or second trimester each year in the United States, with approximately 900,000 emergency room visits related to pregnancy loss. But patients often have little way of knowing what their treatment will cost until after receiving care.
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Talia Adika, who advises people on health insurance plans, says one challenge is that miscarriage is rarely explicitly addressed in the summaries patients receive outlining their medical benefits.
"You'll see a lot of labor and delivery, care throughout the pregnancy. The blood work, the sonograms, the imaging," Adika explained. "We very rarely see that terminology."
The amount a patient ultimately owes can depend on several factors, including where treatment takes place, whether care is considered an emergency and whether the hospital and medical providers are in-network. And during a pregnancy emergency, patients may have little or no opportunity to weigh those financial considerations.
"When you're in an emergency room, you have no choice. You're at the mercy of who's helping you," Adika said.
"When we have a true medical emergency and it's life or death, we don't know what the cost will be until afterwards."
For patients facing unexpected charges, Adika recommends negotiating medical bills, writing letters and challenging coverage decisions.
For LeMieux, one of the most painful aspects of her experience was the difference between how her pregnancies were treated financially. She said the birth of her daughter was covered in full, while the care she needed following the loss of her son led to a dispute over expenses despite using the same doctor and hospital.
"I asked them why my live birth would be covered in full had I made it full term and was able to bring him home from the hospital," LeMieux said. "And I asked why having the same provider and going to the same hospital now would not be covered under something that they had already approved."
As October marks Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, LeMieux hopes sharing her experience will encourage other families to speak openly about the financial consequences of miscarriage and stillbirth.
For her, the issue is about more than medical bills. It's about the additional burden placed on families already navigating unimaginable grief.
"The way that things get changed is when enough people start talking about it to change it," she said.
