During my time in Houston, I had been going to the same ob/gyn in Houston for 6 years. I love her, she's awesome, and she has been with me through some ups and downs! I was SO SAD to leave her to move to Abu Dhabi.
My first priority once moving to Abu Dhabi was to find a new doctor. I combed the expat forums, I researched the hospitals and I originally landed on delivering at the Corniche Hospital. It's an older, public hospital in the UAE, but it is well known for its ability to handle delivery complications and its excellent NICU facilities. It is also known for being the only hospital in Abu Dhabi that offers expectant mothers the option to use a midwife instead of doctor for uncomplicated pregnancies, and the reviews from moms online who chose the midwife option were glowing! After a little extra digging, however, I learned that the Corniche is continually overcrowded, and at some point they started turning expat expectant mothers away because the barely had enough beds to handle local Emirati expectant mothers. One of the problems with the internet is that there is so much information out there and a lot of it is outdated -- so ratings and reviews circa 2011/2012 don't really apply anymore. Compounded with some news articles describing the all-day waits for scheduled appointments and the recent change in management for the Ob/Gyn department, I decided the Cornice was probably not for me after all. Back to the drawing board.
The bloggers and forums advised that if not going the midwife route, choose a hospital first and then choose a doctor. Our relocation agent suggested BrightPoint Royal Women's hospital - it was new, it had the same level of NICU facilities as the Corniche, and private rooms for new moms. Great! Next step, find a doctor. I combed through threads looking for doctors similar in background and philosophy to my doctor back home. I want to have minimal intervention unless necessary - the rate of planned C-Sections in UAE is quite high, so I've been careful to read on up philosophies of the doctors I was interviewing. I finally picked a doctor at King's College Clinic who has hospital rights at Brightpoint. G and I loved her - we immediately felt comfortable in her office, and had a great discussion about low risk pregnancy and delivery, until we found out that she was not taking patients due in August because of her scheduled vacation. She had a couple of suggestions for other OBs who might be similar to her, but she couldn't strongly recommend any of them since she hadn't worked directly with any of them.
My next attempt came through a friend I made at work. Her OB was located at Harley Street Clinic, just a stone's throw from our apartment. AND she went to the University of Michigan! Total Plus!! She was friendly and pleasant, maybe not as personable as Doctor #1, but I would have been happy to have her delivery my baby. Except she had just left BrightPoint for Danat al Emirate hospital, which was quite far away from both my office and our apartment, and most importantly, not covered by my insurance. No way are we going to pay for this baby out of pocket when we could go to a top line hospital and pay 50 AED (equivalent of $15!!) for our entire hospital stay. This was a major bummer for me, and she also had some suggestions for doctors who I might like.
At this point, I decided to stop trying to find a private clinic doctor and just go straight to the OB/GYN department at BrightPoint Hospital. I figure at least if I go to the hospital clinic, there will always be a well-trained OB on call, and they'll have all my files. By the time G and I interviewed Doctor #3, we didn't really have any new questions to ask. She is very nice and through all my internet searching I haven't seen anything BAD about her, so we're happy enough with her. She is available in August because her long vacation is in July, she speaks English, and she has been very thorough when discussing my test results with me. All is finally going well, and we're super relieved to have someone that we like delivering our baby!
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