So……. It’s May and I’m almost at the end of my ‘pill month’ and let me tell you how it has gone so far.

Finding an amazing doctor in the UAE

Now that I wanted to get this baby making journey back on tracks I decided I really did need to find a doctor I could trust here in the UAE.  It’s not easy to ask if a doctor is ‘willing to help you as a single women in the UAE have a baby’.  The rules are still so grey and you don’t even know if asking this of a doctor is going to make them feel uneasy so I was thankful when a friend of a friend recommended a doctor who had helped someone in a similar position to me.  Let’s call her Doctor Natalie, a regular gynecologist, not an IVF expert, but I went to see her in January 2021 all the same.

WOW…. Dr Natalie was amazing.  She was direct and to the point, but I could tell was very smart and would be very supportive of my journey.  She wanted to read all my medical background from my clinic in Cyprus and she said she would help me however she could.  This was a massive relief and so with that I decided I had better get on and get vaccinated, wait a few months and then get this journey going again.

I was luckily able to be vaccinated in the UAE as early as January 2021 and had my second vaccine the first week in February.  All the reports I had read said ‘if you are trying to get pregnant do not get vaccinated’ and ‘do not try and get pregnant in the three months after getting vaccinated’.  I had to make a quick decision and I decided I needed to get vaccinated quickly and then wait for three months before I tried to get pregnant. I felt this was the safest way to ensure when I did need to travel to Cyprus I was protected from Covid.  I was also worried that the UAE was going to make vaccination mandatory and if I was pregnant then I wasn’t going to be able to get vaccinated but I also wasn’t going to be able to tell anyone why.

So three months after being vaccinated I started taking the birth control pill.  Let’s call this Day 1.  

On day 7 of taking the pill I went to see Dr Natalie for some blood tests and to have a procedure that apparently helps embryo implantation called ‘the scratch’.  I had read about ‘the scratch’ and everything I had read indicated that it was ‘uncomfortable’ but not too bad.  I had had plenty of ‘uncomfortable’ on this journey before so this wasn’t going to phase me – right!

Wrong! The scratch is essentially like a uterine biopsy.  The doctor uses a plastic cattier like straw to go through your cervix into your uterus and essentially ‘wound’ the uterus lining.  This is done so that your body self-heals and in the process of doing so produces lots of hormones that your body needs to help with embryo implantation. All that I read about the procedure says that this sometimes helps with embryo implantation, there is mixed research as to if it really does help but it definitely doesn’t hurt, so I decided to opt for it as I wanted to give everything I possibly could a try to give things all the possibility of succeeding.

Dr Natalie told me that the procedure sometimes requires anesthetic but we would see how it goes.  OK…. So this is going to get graphic…..

Yoga Breathing Needed

Upon entering my cervix the doctor asked if I had ever had surgery on my cervix as there was an ‘irregularity’ she had seen.  I answered that I had not and started to get a little worried. Seconds later she announced that I had an irregular growth in my cervix. It was a small tumor a polyp and that I would need to book an in-patient procedure to have it removed.  She explained that it was probably not cancerous but it needs to be removed and a biopsy done to be sure.  Seconds later she announced that if I held very still she might be able to remove the polyp right then and there and avoid the ‘in patient procedure’.  Sure enough a little tug and she removed this ball of flesh from inside me and popped it into a Petri dish ready to be sent for the biopsy.  I actually didn’t feel anything during this procedure but she did comment on my exemplary pain threshold which I was quite proud of….. However what came next assured me that my pain threshold wasn’t quite as exemplary as I had thought!

Next was carrying out ‘the scratch’ or the uterus biopsy.  In order do to this, this plastic catheter needed to enter my cervix into my uterus.  Well my cervix was firmly closed and it did NOT want to open for anything.  A second doctor joined us to hold my hand and push hard with an ultrasound on my bladder as Dr Natalie inserted the plastic straw like thing through my cervix into my uterus.  

I won’t lie there needed to be some serious breath work that took place here.  It was like my worst ever period pain times 100 not to mention the pressure on my bladder.  Thankfully the procedure only lasted about a minute and there was no need for anesthetic which Dr Natalie was very pleased about.  I had some cramping and bleeding for the next 12 hours but all in all I was ok.  Another sample was sent off to the lab and now I just had to wait 5 days to make sure I didn’t have uterine cancer!

On day 12 of taking the pill I got an email from Dr Natalie’s nurse informing me that my biopsy of the polyp and the uterus lining were normal and nothing to worry about! – phew….. crisis averted… back on the baby journey and now I had to wait until day 16 to get a uterus scan.

Day 16 and I am back in Dr Natalie’s office for a uterine scan. I am so used to these now that I barely think about it.  Dr Natalie took some pictures, some measurements and said all looks as good as it should at mid month and ordered her nurse to immediately send me the report and pictures so I could forward them to my clinic in Cyprus. 

I sent the report and scans to my doctor in Cyprus thinking that they would instruct me to take a prescribed injection of hormones that I was due to take in the next few days.  This was an injection that would help with the growth of the uterus lining. However after receiving my scans the Cyprus doctor told me there was no need to take the injection and to just carry on with the pill and aspirin and pre-natal vitamin and contact them again on day 1 of my period, which was due in about 3-4 days.

So this is where I am….. a few more days of the birth control pill and then it is ‘game time’ and shit is getting real! I am really doing this thing.  And as those of you that have followed my journey know, my biggest dilemma has been that I can’t stay in the UAE if I do get pregnant.  This means that I will have to leave my job, something no one in their right mind would do during a pandemic when so many people are getting laid off, but again is that just another excuse?  I do however need to jump into this thing with both feet and give it all I have to just see what happens and then worry about the fall out of no job or no pregnancy or both, if that happens.

This being the case I made a plan and that plan involve an end date for my work. Helped by some definite signs from my work that it is time to move on, I put a 12 month plan in place at the end of 2020 and that plan is starting to be put into action.  It is scary as hell but I think no matter what is going on in the world it is now or never to try this next chapter, so with that being said I handed my notice in at work last week.  Not only is the baby making journey getting real but so is the next chapter of my life whatever that may look like.  By the end of 2021 I will be unemployed and hopefully pregnant.