Behind the Scenes with Luciana Gomide: Final Touches on “Maternity Abroad”

Luciana Gomide, author of In Brazil and My Faraway Grandparents, played a key role in shaping my new book Maternity Abroad. With her experience as a writer, immigrant, and mother, Luciana helped me make sure this isn’t just another guide — it’s a book that speaks to the heart as much as the mind.

About Luciana Gomide

Luciana has been living in Canada since 2019 and has over a decade of experience creating educational content and working with publishers. Her books have already reached thousands of readers around the world:

  • In Brazil (2022) sold over 3,000 copies in 34 countries.

  • My Faraway Grandparents (2024), now available in English, continues her mission of telling stories that connect families across borders.

Her thoughtful feedback shaped Maternity Abroad into a resource that is both practical and deeply empathetic.

Why Luciana’s Involvement Matters

When you’re expecting a baby in a country that’s not your own, information alone isn’t enough. You need reassurance. You need honesty. You need to know you’re not alone. Luciana’s perspective helped refine each chapter so that this book can offer all three.

What “Maternity Abroad” Offers

Imagine standing in a hospital corridor where no one speaks your language. You don’t know if your partner will be allowed in the delivery room. You’re not sure how to ask for skin‑to‑skin contact or even what’s considered “normal” here. The fear isn’t just about giving birth — it’s about doing it alone, in a culture you’re still trying to understand.

This is the hidden side of motherhood abroad: the silence, the uncertainty, the ache of missing your support system. Too often, women walk into one of the most important days of their lives carrying not just a baby, but also the heavy weight of doubt and fear.

Maternity Abroad was written for you — to turn that fear into confidence and that loneliness into connection. Through real stories of mothers who’ve walked this path, and honest reflections on the cultural shocks and small victories of pregnancy and birth in another country, this book is both a guide and a companion.

Because becoming a mother far from home shouldn’t mean doing it without a map — or without someone holding your hand.

🌍 Available worldwide..


Other Publications

Emily never planned to meet Daniel. And yet, day after day, under the arches of Waterloo Bridge, routine becomes ritual — and ritual becomes something more. It’s not fireworks. It’s the quiet kind of love that sneaks up on you, the one you almost miss if you’re not paying attention.

✨ A gift for my readers — completely free.

👉 Read it now and let yourself fall in love, fifteen minutes at a time.

🌍 Parenting abroad isn’t just logistics — it’s identity, belonging, and the quiet work of building a home away from home. Parenting Unpacked is here to hold your hand through it.

✨ Coming soon — sign up to be the first to know.


Jessica Gabrielzyk

Jessica Gabrielzyk is a Brazilian writer living in Switzerland. She moved there with her husband and daughter, who was three months old at the time and had strong opinions about the whole thing even then.

She writes about change.

The visible kind and the kind that happens inside a person, while everything on the outside looks fine.

Her first book, Maternity Abroad, explored what it means to become a mother far from the system you trusted. It has reached readers in more than fifteen countries across five continents. Parenting Unpacked, her second book, follows the experience of parenting through major life disruption, whether that's an international move, a career loss, a new baby, or a life that simply stops responding the way it used to. My First American Coloring Book was created to help toddlers engage with daily life in the United States through play and familiar imagery.

She is a member of SIETAR, the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research, and the International Academy of Brazilian Literature.

She writes for the parent who is still inside it, getting through the day, and wondering somewhere underneath all of it who they are becoming.

When she is not writing, she is walking forty minutes uphill with a stroller, telling herself the exercise is the point.

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Jessie Cunniffe Brings Her Magic to “Maternity Abroad”

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Pregnant in a Foreign Country? Read This First