I had her for several monitoring appointments and I liked her. I think SG has been working on delivery of bad news with their REs. My sense is that Dr. Widra respects her tremendously.
Dr. Reh, who did my egg retrieval, is also in Arlington. I was very impressed by Dr. Reh. She seemed smart and thoughtful. And she gave me the best possible outcome for the egg retrieval.

Shady Grove Fertility just opened a location in Arlington (in Ballston) However, the doctor at the new location is Dr. Anitha Nair. https://www.arlnow.com/2016/07/25/fertility-clinic-opens-in-ballston/

Has anyone had more recent experience with her?

She doesn't know what she's doing, and when she does procedures it's painful. Avoid her.

She did my egg retrieval and I looked like Carrie from the waste down (had to be rushed back into surgery room for additional work). No long term damage was done but I was not impressed.

Do not recommend her - she is very rude and unprofessional.

I would avoid Nair. She's just going through the motions and is patronizing and unwilling to answer questions. I know of several stories of her screw ups costing people real money and real time.

The doctor who controls your cycle is important. Choose someone with a better reputation, who actually reads charts. She does not.

Anonymous wrote:thanks so much. I just went through a miscarriage at 11.5 weeks after two previous miscarriages and I know many women go through much more than that. But I just can't handle the thought of trying this again with 5 more frozen embryos. I'm thankful I have the embryos but I just want to test them and move on to donor egg if need be. SGF argued that testing won't make them healthy which is obviously true but it WOULD at least rule out the unhealthy ones as you say! Problem is that i'm in shared risk so they have some control

They don't want to lose your money. They'll relent if you hint that is in the cards.

You are not obligated to miscarry 5 more times, nor is that cost-effective for them, or for you (you still have to pay for the meds each cycle). I HATE that SG makes you fight for what's reasonable, but they will relent. Remember, it's all about the money for them. YOU are paying for the testing, they'll come around.

Btw, a friend of mine with RPL in shared risk did testing for 3-4 out of her 6 shared risk cycles. So it absolutely happens there.

I had Dr. Nair for IVF treatment and I did not have a good experience at all. Maybe she's too busy to monitor and check in on her patients but she was always rushed when I asked to speak to her on the phone with questions. I never felt she remembered who I was, or was familiar with my case. In the end, my treatment never moved forward and I canceled it because I was so frustrated and without any explanation or solutions from her. I had unexplained high levels of estrogen while on the pill, which kept preventing me from being able to start my IVF process. I did this for 5 months with no explanations for why this might be happening. 5 months that I felt was valuable time wasted. It turns out, according to my new doctor that I should have simply been put on a different pill/dosage in order to "quiet my ovaries". My new doctor said I was likely just ovulating through the pill and needed minor adjustments. I had no idea because this was my first experience. Now I'm 42 years old. I basically lost a year doing that with her, and having to switch doctors, and am extremely remorseful about the lost time.

thanks so much. I just went through a miscarriage at 11.5 weeks after two previous miscarriages and I know many women go through much more than that. But I just can't handle the thought of trying this again with 5 more frozen embryos. I'm thankful I have the embryos but I just want to test them and move on to donor egg if need be. SGF argued that testing won't make them healthy which is obviously true but it WOULD at least rule out the unhealthy ones as you say! Problem is that i'm in shared risk so they have some control

For some reason Shady Grove is against this. Dr. Widra fought me on it for months, even though the donor had caused three simultaneous miscarriages. They say that unfreezing and refreezing damages the embryos but I found a study somewhere, academic and peer reviewed, decent sample size, that showed no reduction in pregnancy rates.

There is no consideration for the fact that you have to drug yourself up for each successive transfer and go through the BFN several times if you pick the wrong ones. Also, from reading forums and talking to labs, the way an embryo looks means nothing as far as which are genetically normal. Many friends who tested, since they couldn't afford several successive frozen transfers, said the normal embryo would have been 3rd or 4th in line, had they not tested. They are YOUR embryos, do what you need to do.

One of the reasons for CCRM's phenomenal success rates is they really push testing, and thus put in mostly normal embryos. I don't know what they think of thaw and refreeze but maybe it's worth doing a consult with them for your peace of mind.

I recommend to all friends to have the biopsy and testing done before the freeze if there are more than 2, after my experience fighting Shady Grove on thaw and refreeze after a miscarriage.