Lia Bernardi

She is a warm, compassionate doctor. She does a good job balancing my own wishes/priorities with her medical judgement. She patiently answered all of my questions (and I had A LOT of questions!) She made a point to involve my husband in discussions as well, whereas a different doctor that we saw first nearly ignored him. She advocated on my behalf with my insurance company when they didn't want to cover IVF after 3 IUI cycles.

Do your reading in advance and come prepared with a list of questions.

She was very warm and kind in her in-person and email interactions. Sometimes it was hard to communicate directly with her via email (MyChart) because the nurses answer all the messages.

25 mg Clomid x 5 days for 1st and 2nd IUIs. I produced 2 mature follicles the 1st time and 1 the second time. 50 mg Clomid x 5 days for 3rd IUI-- still only produced 1 mature follicle, pregnancy results pending (too soon to test). She decided that it I am not pregnant, next time I should come in sooner for baseline testing (day 3 instead of day 5) so I can start Clomid earlier in hopes of producing 2 follicles. She had recommended 50 mg Clomid from the start but I wanted to start with 25 mg and she was OK with that.

Very prompt responses to MyChart messages and very detailed instructions provided. She performed one of my IUIs and she explained the procedure step-by-step. When I requested that she communicate directly with my doctor to answer a question, she did so and got back to me quickly.

Strengths are that they are an academic center, they are on the cutting edge of medical research and they follow all of the recommended SART guidelines. They do not promote any products or services that are not medically proven to work (i.e. no accupuncture, vitamins/supplements, fertility nutritionists, etc). In my opinion this is a good thing. They do have psychologists and the one I saw was great. Weaknesses are that they are super busy and sometimes you wait over an hour for ultrasound/labs during morning monitoring hours (it is first come first serve). Also sometimes you have to wait on hold for 5 min when you call. Due to the volume of patients it can definitely feel like a "factory." You need to be somewhat savvy about your own medical care and ask questions if something doesn't seem right. There is not a lot of "hand-holding"-- you need to fend for yourself.

With my insurance, office visits had a $50 copay. IUI was covered by my insurance.

When we first went for our consultation with Dr. Bernardi, she seemed incredibly friendly and knowledgable and like she would be a good doctor to work with. When it was time to start our cycle though I didn't hear from her at all, working only with nurses. When I requested for her to call, she elected instead to send me a message a day later informing me she was going on maternity leave and good luck. So essentially, she did not tell me she was going on maternity leave until the last moment, when she certainly could have told me sooner and made alternative arrangements for my care. In addition, she could not take the time to speak with me over the phone and discuss certain procedures and answer my questions. It was very disappointing.

Ask a lot of questions and be persistent if you actually want to speak on the phone with her. Although ultimately I would recommend a different doctor at Northwestern.

I received no personalized care or consideration from Dr. Bernardi. I genuinely felt that my cycle did not matter to her.

We used oral estrogen tablets, injectable progesterone, and progesterone suppositories.

The nurses were extremely responsive, friendly, and easy to communicate with.

The biggest thing I wish I had known before I started with this clinic was that doctors aren't actual present for any cycle ultrasounds. All ultrasounds leading up to a transfer are done by staff. This was different from the level of care I had at my previous clinic and therefore was unexpected for me. Overall, Northwestern is fast and efficient, but I felt the staff as a whole could be a little friendlier. I had issues contacting the financial coordinators and getting my embryos transferred from my previous clinic.

$5,000 for an embryo transfer, plus the cost of medication, plus copay expenses for workup appointments.

When we had our initial consultation and I told her in our last cycle we had only done a single embryo, she asked why and thought we could do two embryos. That was the extent of her comments or explanation about the subject.

Dr. Bernardi is an excellent doctor. She has very strong communication skills and she is always giving you all your options. She does research and it is obvious she thinks of you as a patient and human being, rather than just another number that comes in. Dr. Bernardi is always patient with me as I ask her lots of questions and have plenty of anxiety around my situation. She is always upbeat and remains positive. She checks in on me when i'm not expecting it. When she says she will call or email, she always does. I don't have a negative thing to say about her. I can't express how happy I am that I switched to her after my 2nd miscarriage. She is very empathetic and caring.

Don't be afraid to ask her anything. She is so nice and professional at the same time. I don't think she has a shock feature. She is very responsive to all your questions and concerns.

Dr. Bernardi went out of her way to ease my anxiety. I never felt like I was just another number to her, and continue to feel like she genuinely cares about me. She answers my emails at times as late as 10:30 at night. She calls to check up on me when she doesn't have to. During my first retrieval she popped by to wish me luck before I went under. She is always very thorough and ways all the options with me. She allowed me to send her as many emails as I wanted that went straight to her mailbox instead of the nurses pool.

When I first met Dr. Bernardi, I had recently gone through my 2nd miscarriage. My original doctor wanted me to start IVF treatment as soon as my period came back. I wasn't comfortable with this so we asked for a 2nd opinion. After looking at my history Dr. Bernardi offered to do a recurrent loss panel. She told us that it wasn't necessary but she was curious if there could be a potential reason for the 2nd loss. It was her that figured out that I have APS. With this new diagnosis she thought since I got pregnant 2x already with just IUI that it could happen again. We agreed that my tolerance for IUI would be a 3 cycle limit. We tried 3 more IUI's and I didn't get pregnant. She was willing to do as many more as I wanted but I said I was done and wanted to move onto IVF. I'm young, only 31 so we thought I'd have a good response. I also have PCOS, so our first round she was very cautious about my medicine. I was on the lowest dosage of everything. We retrieved 11 eggs, 7 fertilized and only 3 made it to blast. Before we had the genetic results back, we talked with her and decided to do 1 more retrieval to get some back up embryos incase it didn't work, and also for our future since we wanted more than 1 kid. Our 2nd retrieval went extremely well, and Dr. Bernardi upped my meds just a little bit from 75, to 150. (She was still cautious). The 2nd time around we got 25 eggs, 22 mature, and 19 fertilized. 11 of them made it to blastocyst! Today we did a "fresh" transfer, but used a frozen embryo from our first cycle. I can't tell you if it worked or not yet, but I feel great about our potential!

Dr. Bernardi has a set of 4-5 nurses that work with her. I do have a favorite nurse that is not on her team though. Nurse Amy Dorsey is my favorite nurse as she had been with me through all of my journey before seeing Dr. Bernardi. All of the nurses have been professional. I haven't encountered any nurse who wasn't really friendly and empathetic.

Strength: Doctors are mostly all great, (don't know all, and there are ones I don't like). They have the best administrative people who check you in. They all know me by name and are the best part of the mornings. Weakness: With so many doctors on staff, your main doctor will not necessarily preform your procedures. I've encountered 1 doctor 2x who I didn't like. She performed my d&c and was not empathetic towards what I may be feeling. She also did my 2nd egg retrieval but was a little nicer. My own dr got to do my embryo transfer which I was very happy about. With so many nurses on staff you aren't assigned a primary nurse who knows you and your history without having to check your charts.

The monitoring appointments are like a well oiled machine. They are efficient and are conscious that the women have to get to work. They started opening their doors as early at 6:45am to accommodate the morning rush.

I don't really know everything. Our IUI's usually cost us about $30 because insurance covered it. Our first IVF cycle things were covered. Our IVF meds cost about $400 with insurance. PGS testing was done outside of our clinic so it cost 1795. There was also a $890 freezing fee. The 2nd round was 1/2 out of pocket since we maxed out our insurance. The egg retrieval was ~$5000. The transfer was ~$3500. The iVf meds were around ~$3000. Plus, the $890 freezing fee again.

We agreed that we would only do a single embryo transfer because of my age, and risk of doing multiple embryos. I already will have a high risk pregnancy due to having APS, so it didn't seem worth it put me at even more risk.

Dr. Bernardi was recommended to me while I was under the care of one of her colleagues and had some concerns about my care. I met with her and immediately felt at ease. She asked about my reasons for leaving the other physician in attempts to get to know me better as a patient. She trial-ed a different protocol that allowed me to get a cycle in before the end of the year lab closing. We both went in with low expectations due to my lower reserve and were pleased with the outcome, making it to retrieval and freezing embryos.

If you are looking for empathetic, creative, and warm, Dr. Bernardi is a wonderful fit.

Dr. Bernardi treated me with compassion and empathy unlike any of the other four specialists we met with. She was creative and willing to work in a timeline when a colleague of hers was not.

We did a fresh start (no priming) and higher doses of FSH (300) and LH (150). Ganirelix was added on day 5. I triggered on day 8.

Northwestern is state of the art but you need to advocate for yourself. You won't get an AFC during your ultrasound but can press the nurse who gives you the results later in the day for this information.