Bundle of Joy
Shady Grove Fertility’s new location in Delaware delivers compassionate, cutting-edge care to patients who struggle to start or expand their families.
Anne Hutchinson, M.D., gets daily reminders that specializing in reproductive medicine was the best career decision she could have made. She cites the correspondence she has with former patients who excitedly share photos or updates about the children that Shady Grove Fertility has helped bring into the world.
“That is my favorite part,” Dr. Hutchinson says. “Whenever someone leaves our care [after having a baby], my parting words are always, ‘Please send pictures.’ Patients do a wonderful job of reaching out and I love it. I get to watch their babies grow up, which is really the coolest part of what we do.”
Dr. Hutchinson and her colleague Nicole M. Marchetto, M.D., M.P.H., chose careers in reproductive medicine because they wanted to help women in a research-based field that’s always evolving. They also wanted to “wear many different hats” in the course of a single day, ranging from counselor to scientist. Most meaningful of all, however, was the opportunity to help patients navigate the sometimes-bumpy road to starting or expanding a family.
“It’s remarkable,” says Dr. Marchetto, who joined the practice in the summer of 2022. “This has been the most rewarding time period of my career because I’ve been able to see people through from beginning to end. Of course there are tough cases where sometimes they don’t get pregnant right away or it’s a more complicated journey than anyone anticipated. But you’re really their advocate and hopefully the person who’s able to coach them through to their endgame.”
Shady Grove Fertility has been helping patients become parents for more than three decades. The organization has offices across the country, with an especially strong presence in southeastern Pennsylvania. Drs. Hutchinson and Marchetto see patients at Shady Grove Fertility’s first office in Delaware, located in Newark. Dr. Marchetto describes it as a “hub and spoke” model, with numerous convenient locations including Allentown, Center City Philadelphia, Lancaster, Mechanicsburg, Warrington, and York, and its newest office coming soon to Abington. These locations all serve the practice’s main Chesterbrook location, which is home to Shady Grove Fertility’s surgery center and embryology lab in Pennsylvania. A significant benefit of the hub-and-spoke model is that it allows Chesterbrook to be a proficient lab.
Dr. Hutchinson joined Shady Grove Fertility three years ago after earning her medical degree from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, followed by a residency at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center and a fellowship at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Marchetto graduated from Drexel University College of Medicine, completed a residency at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s-Mount Sinai West, and followed by a fellowship at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
Both doctors value Shady Grove Fertility’s commitment to evidence-based medicine, its high success rates, and having access to the resources of a large practice, including access to other top minds in the field of reproductive medicine.
“As somebody who cares deeply about research in medicine,” Dr. Marchetto says, “it was important for me to be where there’s constant conversation about the latest studies and how we’re going to implement them into our daily practice. Also, let’s generate more data and make sure we’re furthering that knowledge, because there’s still so much we don’t know.”
“It’s the best of both worlds,” Dr. Hutchinson adds. “I think we benefit from being a large practice in terms of outcomes and resources, but on a day-to-day basis for our patients we have a very small, tight-knit community.”
The doctors understand that walking into a fertility clinic requires courage, and that patients who struggle to conceive often feel stress and anxiety as they seek help from a specialist. Whether it’s a young couple that has been trying for years to have their first child, a more mature couple looking to add to their existing family, or a same-sex couple interested in becoming parents, Shady Grove Fertility is eager to help.
“Everyone comes at it with their own ideas of what family is, and it’s our job to meet them where they are and make those goals a reality,” Dr. Hutchinson says. “There are a lot of different ways to make a family, which is super cool. I’ve been in those shoes, I’ve felt those things, and I know how stressful that can be. To be a calming presence for somebody, to explain what’s going on, and to give some objective input and help them realize their goals is the best thing I can imagine doing.”
To ease the minds of patients who bear the burden of past experiences and disappointments, the doctors offer a welcoming and supportive space where patients can focus on possibilities, not problems.
“This is one of our new offices, and it was important for us to make sure the design has as little clinical feel as possible,” Dr. Hutchinson adds. “Our offices don’t have exam tables; they just have comfortable chairs where we can sit and talk. I think it’s really important to embody that, because this is not just a medical treatment; it’s a whole other experience.”
Infertility treatment has come a long way over the years, with in vitro fertilization (IVF) alone making great strides from the multiple births that were common a decade ago to the single-transfer embryos utilized today with great success rates. IVF is just one treatment possibility, and the team at Shady Grove Fertility will guide patients through all of their options to find the one that is most suitable to their specific circumstances. It may include oral medication to increase the efficiency of their natural ovulation and reproduction, guidance on the best methods to become pregnant, or seeking help from a reproductive urologist to address male factor infertility.
“For any one individual, IVF is going to be the most effective, efficient way to get them pregnant, but not everybody needs it,” Dr. Hutchinson says. “More than 50 percent of the patients who come through never end up doing IVF, and they complete their families without ever having to approach that.”
Shady Grove Fertility even offers a Shared Risk 100% Refund Guarantee Program for eligible patients. The program covers up to six IVF or donor egg cycles and any subsequent frozen embryo transfers. If treatment does not lead to a live birth or the patient opts to withdraw from the program, Shady Grove Fertility will issue a full refund.
No matter what a patient’s journey looks like, the Shady Grove Fertility team wants to stand beside them from beginning to end. Drs. Hutchinson and Marchetto look forward to welcoming new patients to the Newark office so they can experience the joy that comes only from welcoming a son or daughter into the world.
“My husband and I had our own fertility journey [to become parents],” says Dr. Marchetto. “To be able to help people achieve that goal is something that keeps me motivated.”
Shady Grove Fertility – Newark
111 Continental Drive, Suite 114
Newark, DE 19713
(302) 467-1898
111 Continental Drive, Suite 114
Newark, DE 19713
(302) 467-1898
Visit www.shadygrovefertility.com for details about Shady Grove Fertility’s other convenient locations in Pennsylvania: Allentown, Center City Philadelphia, Chesterbrook, Lancaster, Mechanicsburg, Warrington, and York, as well as a forthcoming location in Abington.
Photo by Jody Robinson
Published (and copyrighted) in Suburban Life magazine, February 2024.
