Out and About in Dubai
Ramblings of a Chinese-American living in the SimCity of the Middle East…

In case anyone was wondering, I’m not going to go into any of the gory details of the actual birthing.  That’s the kind of fun you’ll just have to experience for yourself (or possibly watch your significant other go through).

I just wanted to relate my experience of the paperwork that was needed to register baby HB’s birth in Dubai, to obtain his US and UK passport and birth certificates, and to obtain his Dubai residence visa.

I’m not sure what went on with the Dubai birth registry as DB took care of that part.   (I’ll have to ask him about it –  if I remember – and blog about it later.  It’s just that if I don’t get this post published, I may not come back to finish this for a few months as you’ve seen with my track record.)  I just remember something about taking the birth announcement-type paper that’s issued by the hospital to some place in Deira called Al Baraha hospital to get an Arabic birth certificate.  Then he takes that Arabic birth certificate to be translated into English (within the same hospital) and then both Arabic and English certificates gets stamped by the Dubai Ministry of Health (possibly still within the same hospital). Costs were minimal at this point, I believe.

(By the way, when I was discharged from American Hospital, the nurse gave us a form with instructions on how to obtain the Dubai Arabic and English birth certificates and also how to get them attested – so that was nice of them.)

Since DB had to go back to work, I took care of the rest of the legal paperwork.  About 4 days after HB’s birth, I went with baby and my mom to get the Dubai-issued Arabic and English birth certificates certified by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  Now this is possibly one of the biggest government buildings in Dubai but did they have to use the smallest letters possible to put on their building???  I drove past and around this building 3 times, ended up in Deira so paid needless Salik tolls twice, before I realized where it was.

So if you are coming from WTC roundabout, take the right turn at Burjman, then stay in your left lane and at the next traffic light intersection you can either (1) make a U-turn (you will see the big Ministry building now on your right) and take the first right and then right again into the small street that leads you into Embassy row or (2) make a left turn and then left again making your way towards Embassy row. Anyway, parking in the lots close to this building was a nightmare so I turned off on some side street and was able to find paid parking.

The instructions from American Hospital said to go to counter number something or other and get in line but luckily the Ministry had moved away from the queue system instead you now get a number from the reception desk and then wait your turn.  There was one seating area dedicated to women and children.  We got there about 11:30am and at 11:35am I realized I had no cash!  I quickly ran out (NOT a good idea to run when one has just given birth – ouch!) to find an ATM which was luckily only 2 blocks away but when I got there I remembered that we hadn’t been paid our salary yet so I could only withdraw enough money to pay for ONE document to be certified.  ARG!!

When I got back, my mom said they had just called my ticket number.  ARG again!! Not knowing what to do, I must’ve looked a bit lost because the Emirati who was handling the attestations motioned me over and asked me what I needed.  I told him and he asked me which one I wanted attested.  I said, “English birth certificate.”  So he applied some stamps on HB’s English birth certificate, then rubber stamped over those stamps and we were on our way – me hoping and praying that not getting the Arabic version attested wouldn’t be a problem in the near future.

With the UAE attestation hurdle completed, my husband and I ventured into the US and UK arena.  Since the UK Embassy is only open in the AM and the US Consulate only in the PM, we figured we could tackle both in one day.  So wrong we were.

I often get asked about my experience of having a baby in Dubai:  What was it like? Is the medical care any good? Does my child have UAE citizenship?

I’ll tackle the last question first.  No, baby HB does not get automatic UAE citizenship.  It’s near impossible to do so if a child is born from expat parents. Only 10% (if that much) of UAE population is Emirati and they like to keep it that way.  So an expat child who is born in Dubai is stateless at birth basically.  Since I am American and DB is British, baby HB now has dual-citizenship and holds passports and birth certificates from both the US and the UK.  I’ll go into our experience with that process in Part 2 or Part 3 or however long it will take me to tell the story.

Okay, so in short, Dubai being a third world country, it was quite a hardship to have a baby here.

You know I’m kidding right?  (I hope I didn’t just scare anyone out there reading this.)

I don’t know how Dubai ranks, exactly, in medical care but I would say that it has excellent medical facilities and healthcare providers.  You can choose between private healthcare (very expensive as in any other country unless you are rich or have insurance) or government healthcare (practically free or very low cost).

Because DB’s insurance covered it, I choose the very fancy schmancy private facilities of a place called “American Hospital” where all the doctors and nurses are North American board certified or equivalent – whatever that really means – because being American, that’s what I felt comfortable with, this being my first pregnancy. Oh, and with the fancy schmancy part?  Well, it’s rumored that you get champagne served to you after your delivery.  Yeah, that totally didn’t happen to me so I think next time I need to find another hospital. Maybe that new “City Hospital” that just opened up in Healthcare City.

Side Note:  Private hospitals are so expensive (hm…or maybe my insurance provider is just stingy) that I actually will be relegated to the government hospital route if I have a 2nd baby in Dubai because I used up my lifetime allotment of insurance funds for maternity costs.  Oh well.   I think it costs about 25,000 dhs ($6,800) for a natural birth (including all doctor visits, ultrasounds, etc) for private care versus 8,000 dhs ($2,200) for public care.  I have no idea how that compares with giving birth in the US or UK.

In short, I felt medically very well-cared for in Dubai, I really liked my OB/GYN, wait-times at the clinic/hospital weren’t too bad (15-20 minutes at most), facilities were clean and modern, receptionists were semi-friendly, and everything was direct-billed to my insurance company (except for the 6,000 dhs that I went over and above my annual maternity limit and had to pay by credit card – good thing I didn’t have a C-section cuz I think that’s an additional 10k dhs or $3000 on top of everything!).

I do want to say that I had an uncomplicated pregnancy and delivery.  In other words, I never had to test the ability of my doctor nor the hospital of dealing with any issues and so I often wonder if I would have such positive things to say about my experience had I had any real complications.

Here he is at 6 days old all curled up in his daddy’s hand: