At age 36 and only 7 months TTC, I'd think you'd be a good candidate for a couple rounds of IUI or another low-tech option first. However, pushing IVF isn't necessarily ulterior motives. I never did IUI, but I've heard a lot of people say it was a waste of time they wished they skipped it and went straight to IVF. And everything associated with infertility treatment takes twice as long as you think it will. Age 36 is a good age and your prognosis with IVF is probably pretty good, but it doesn't get any easier.

I was 38 when I started IVF, and I really wished I had been 36. We were also unexplained and my numbers like AMH etc. were great for my age, but it was clear from our results (like low fertilization rate, high number of aneuploid embryos) that egg quality was a big factor for us.

I am currently expecting a baby and have been with CCRM since 2019. Most of my friends went to SG and always complained like they felt like just a number. I wanted a smaller place and CCRM was recommended. I had a great experience. Everyone knew me by name and were invested in my story. Billing and Finance were not great, but my friends had similar complaints with SG too. The phlebotomist at CCRM is the best and if I could hire him for every blood draw and IV insert, I would. No practice is perfect and you will find people who love a certain practice/doctor and vice versa.

Anonymous wrote:PP CCRM has some of the best IVF rates in this area, so your GP is correct that they are quite good.

This is totally false? Unless you are using some secret data source. According to SART SGF has much better success rates. CCRM in Colorado is a totally different story.

They didn’t suggest you try anything else before IVF? Did they explain how your test results relate to the recommendation for IVF? Your specific test results will factor in but at 36 you may be able to try less invasive things first.

I started the process with CCRM NOVA and it feels like it’s pulling teeth just to get anything scheduled or get a basic answer on anything. I was so put off with the communication and horrible interaction with the finance team, that I’m now planning to go out of state. It’s sad because I’m sure the doctors are good at what they do but it shouldn’t be this hard to get basic information.

I had a terrible experience with CCRM with Dr. Payson who basically was never around so I was shuffled to a different doc every time and they way overstimulated me and got a ton of eggs (30+) not a single one of which properly fertilized. It was the last cycle I could afford and it broke me emotionally and financially. Highly recommend you trust your gut, OP.

We went to CCRM after multiple IUIs and retrievals at Shady Grove and Dominion Fertility. We did a couple rounds at CCRM last year and had issues with communication, especially between protocols, but we stayed because even with the communication issues I felt that the staff, embryologists and doctors were the most engaged, creative with solutions, and skilled compared to my experience with other places. My in office experiences were always positive. I am pregnant now from CCRM after ttc at these various clinics for 5 years. If I were to try again I think I would either go back to CCRM or try Lonetree. I would not go to back Dominion or Shady Grove.

If your egg reserves are good then you might want go try Shady Grove. They can feel like a factory too but their success rates are decent and they have shared risk programs.

I've been at GW, Dominion, and most recently CCRM. Like someone else posted above, Dominion was the best before Dr. DiMattina sold the practice to private equity. I was at Dominion before and after that happened; it was wonderful in 2018, then my RE (Gordon) left. I did 3 IUIs there over 6 months in 2021, shortly before the practice sale was finalized; the experience was not as good as in 2018 but still reasonable. Then I went back at the beginning of 2022 to do my first IVF cycle, and that was an absolute nightmare. It was so bad that I knew before my ER even happened that we would be switching to CCRM if we didn't get any normal embryos. We didn't, so started at CCRM last spring. Their portal was terrible, but they just announced that they are unveiling a new one very soon. Communication with CCRM last spring was not impossible, but definitely had lots of room for improvement. We had very good results there, and I'm due in less than 2 months. It was within about 2 months of starting at CCRM that I began seeing so many posts on facebook CCRM chat groups complaining about major lapses in communication and the crazy high rate of nurse turnover at NoVA CCRM. So I think things really went downhill right around the time I graduated.
I will say that a major upside of CCRM is that morning monitoring ultrasounds were all done by the REs when I was there in spring 2022. Dominion used to do that when I was there in 2018 and most of my monitoring through summer of 2021, but by the time I did my IVF cycle there in the first part of 2022, I was only scanned by an RE on the day of my suppression check and then by their office's OBGYN who is not an RE one other day. All other monitoring was done by the medical assistants and I had virtually no contact with my doctor during the stimulation part of my ER cycle.

I went to CCEM after being at Dominion. I started at CCRM when they were still relatively new in this area. I think there was much better care before they got overwhelmed with so many patients. Which dr are you going to? IUIs are kind of a waste of time.

Anonymous wrote:This is literally in infertility support and discussion.

Have you asked them their opinions on timed sex or IUI? Timed sex is covered by a lot of insurances, and maybe a few cycles will make you feel better about moving onto IVF. We also are diagnosed with unexplained infertility, although my AMH was slightly low at 35 for my age. In the past three years it has halved every year, and now I have very low AMH. In that time we conceived naturally which was then ectopic and have gone through 5 completed rounds of timed sex and one IUI. We are moving onto IVF at this point. For what its worth I have been at three clinics now and all of their staff suck at responding and regularly screw up. In my experience, Dominion was the best, but that was before their buy out. I think this is the lasting effects of COVID that their staff is totally scattered and unresponsive and lazy. You really are going to have to advocate for yourself no matter where you end up on that front. I would follow up saying you need to talk to the doctor again to understand why they are pushing you so hard to IVF at this point before moving forward.

I would guess that this post was originally in a different forum and got flagged, so Jeff who runs DCUM moved it over here.

PP CCRM has some of the best IVF rates in this area, so your GP is correct that they are quite good.

This is literally in infertility support and discussion.

Have you asked them their opinions on timed sex or IUI? Timed sex is covered by a lot of insurances, and maybe a few cycles will make you feel better about moving onto IVF. We also are diagnosed with unexplained infertility, although my AMH was slightly low at 35 for my age. In the past three years it has halved every year, and now I have very low AMH. In that time we conceived naturally which was then ectopic and have gone through 5 completed rounds of timed sex and one IUI. We are moving onto IVF at this point. For what its worth I have been at three clinics now and all of their staff suck at responding and regularly screw up. In my experience, Dominion was the best, but that was before their buy out. I think this is the lasting effects of COVID that their staff is totally scattered and unresponsive and lazy. You really are going to have to advocate for yourself no matter where you end up on that front. I would follow up saying you need to talk to the doctor again to understand why they are pushing you so hard to IVF at this point before moving forward.

You might have better luck posting in the infertility forum. I did precycle testing at CCRM NoVA and it was a horrible experience. Total lack of communication, the staff and physicians seemed to be operating on completely different planets from each other. We switched to Shady Grove but got a surprise natural conception before we ever moved on to actual treatment.

We started the process with CCRM, but it feels very much like an impersonal conveyor belt pushing us through the IVF process without much communication or guidance. Our GP says that they have a great reputation and recommended them highly, but we're feeling very put off and are considering cancelling our plan to start the egg retrieval next cycle. We have been trying for seven months without success, but all of our tests have come back great - there don't seem to be any issues that could cause infertility, yet CCRM has been pushing pretty hard for us to move to IVF immediately. We're both 36, so it's possible that age is the reason (even though our CCRM doctor told me that I have the egg reserves of a 26 year old), although I do suspect the fact that we're paying in cash and our GP is a concierge doctor who does not take insurance may influence them. Am I just being paranoid?