Lia Bernardi, MD

About

Two fellowships, taken in reverse order from the usual path. A recurrent pregnancy loss fellowship at the University of Illinois came first, in 2013; reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Northwestern followed in 2016, along with a master’s in clinical investigation from the same school.

She directs the clinic that grew out of the first of those. Northwestern Medicine lists a Recurrent Pregnancy Loss Clinic among its named services, alongside the IVF lab, fertility preservation and emotional support programs, and Bernardi is its medical director — the physician who sees the patient three miscarriages in, when the standard answer of “try again” has stopped being an answer.

Her training circle is local: biology degree at Northwestern in 2003, MD at Rush Medical College in 2008, OB/GYN residency at the University of Chicago Medical Center in 2012, fellowship training at Illinois and then back to Northwestern as faculty, where she is now an associate professor and helps run the REI fellowship program. Her own statement of intent is unusually specific for a physician bio: individualized care that is “compassionate, thorough and evidence-based,” with every treatment strategy optimized.

Clinical Expertise

• Recurrent pregnancy loss evaluation — structured workup after repeated losses rather than empirical reassurance, with results carried into the plan for the next pregnancy
• Planning the pregnancy after a loss — timing, monitoring intensity and intervention only where the workup supports one
• IVF cycle management — stimulation through transfer, for patients whose losses and infertility overlap
• ICSI and PGT-A — injected fertilization and embryo genetic screening when a transfer is being planned
• Female infertility assessment — ovarian reserve testing, uterine cavity imaging and partner semen analysis as the entry point to any decision
• Clinical trial methodology — the research master’s shows up in how she reads a study before applying it

Why Choose Dr. Lia Bernardi

She trained in miscarriage specifically, before training in IVF. A dedicated recurrent pregnancy loss fellowship at the University of Illinois, completed before her REI fellowship at Northwestern, is a rare sequence on a fertility physician’s CV — and it is the difference between treating loss as a sub-topic of infertility and treating it as its own discipline.

She runs the clinic, so the workup does not stall halfway. As medical director of the Recurrent Pregnancy Loss Clinic she owns the pathway from first consultation through results to the next management plan.

An MS in clinical investigation, earned alongside fellowship. Northwestern’s division puts faculty and fellows through translational research programs funded by NIH and the Gates Foundation; Bernardi’s own graduate work was in study design, which is the skill that decides whether an appealing new treatment is evidence or momentum.

Associate director of the fellowship program. Bernardi helps run Northwestern’s REI training, working with the division’s three clinical fellows.

Professional Affiliations

American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Board-certified in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, Bernardi trained across the same Chicago medical map she now practices on: biology at Northwestern, an MD at Rush Medical College, residency at the University of Chicago Medical Center, the recurrent pregnancy loss fellowship at the University of Illinois, then REI fellowship and a master’s in clinical investigation back at Northwestern, where she is an associate professor and associate director of the fellowship program. Cycles from her practice are reported into the national registry kept by the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology.

Suitable For

Two or more losses. That is the visit at which “keep trying” stops being a sufficient answer — Bernardi’s clinic is built for it.

Patients who were waved off after one or two miscarriages and want the evaluation completed rather than deferred to a future pregnancy.

IVF patients with a miscarriage history, where the next transfer should be planned around the loss rather than repeated identically.

Older patients with a loss behind them, for whom the clock and the workup both matter and cannot be sequenced one after the other.