Dr Nicole Sides and ISIS Fertility were featured in the August 20–26 issue of the Canberra City News
Sides effect: making babies with Dr Nicci
Dr Nicci Sides is a fertility specialist with a new clinic that’s achieving great results. IAN MEIKLE puts her under the microscope.
There’s only one side to Nicci Sides when it comes to making babies. She’s made thousands (“low thousands”) of them and she’s extremely passionate about it.
The plan is to make thousands more now that she and her minority partners have sunk $1.3 million in to Canberra’s latest, state of the are in-vitro fertilisation clinic in Barton.
The Fertility specialist’s dark eyes fire with enthusiasm when I get her started on reproduction. She talks professionally, but with blush making frankness, about private parts, sperm counts, ejaculation; all grist to her daily mill of bringing little miracles to potentially childless couples.
Her ISIS (Egyptian goddess of fertility) clinic has been seeing patients (men and women) only since late February but already it has pushed itself to the top of its national affiliate Monash IVF’s benchmarked average pregnancy success rate of 30 per cent, she says. How is this possible, when the usual experience of new clinics is that of attracting patients who have already tried different things in other places, statistically dragging the average back?
“I wanted to do it the Canberra way; people here are more educated and fitter and involved in the treatment. I wanted it to be a more holistic experience and I am open to natural, alternative practices” she says.
That and she has a well-drilled, small and close team of fertility care nurses, a laboratory and scientists working tightly and cohesively to give everyone –the patient and the doctor – the best possible experience and outcome.
Beyond the peerless equipment of the pristine laboratory, Dr Sides has positively resisted the temptation of making the process cold and technical.
“People usually think we’re going to torture them!” she jokes. “I wanted a homely approach; soft, with a hotel appearance,” she says of the first impression of the ISIS waiting room. It’s like sitting in a lounge room; soft furnishings, a television set and unlimited access to tea and coffee.
Despite her first ISIS patient being 43 and trying for a first baby, Dr Sides typically treats patients 37-years-old and under.
“We do not resort automatically to IVF. Some of our clients are able to achieve pregnancy without using high tech invasive solutions,” she says.
And it’s not all about the female. The clinic also offers a range of fertility treatment options to assist couples with male-related fertility problems. But it comes as a price. Any aspiring father-to-be who is able to successful inseminate his partner in the first month of the doctor’s coaching has to cough up a bar of Toblerone! Happily, this is a regular treat for the lively, talented Dr Sides, herself a mother of three.
A specialist in gynaecology and human reproduction for 13 years, she has been practising in Canberra for around eight years, including six with another clinic.
She was born in the far west of NSW into a farming family on the Hay plains. But hers was not a typical cocky kid’s childhood. Her farmer father had itchy feet and wanted to see Australia. Their property was leased and the family moved from farm to farm for seen years until, at age 11, boarding school ended the tomboy days and the succession of primary schools, new towns and new friends. The journey to medicine had begun and led her ultimately to Sydney University.
But the ethos of her country “fair play” upbringing is never far away. A hard day’s work equals reward,” she says.
And she is often rewarded for her hard work when former patients, who once pregnant are referred on, return to the clinic and she meets their babies for the first time. It brings out another side to Dr Nicci: Pride.
© ISIS Fertility 2010
Canberra Australia