The Episode Is Out.

Maternity Abroad Book
Written By Jessica Gabrielzyk

Yes, you read it right. It’s out!

I had the honor of joining Samar Karam, at Culture Capsule UAE for Part 2, a series about culture, identity, belonging, and the experiences that leave a mark on who you are.

And yes, we talked about my book Maternity Abroad. 🥹 I know. I am excited too.

We talked about what it actually means to navigate maternity as an expat, what giving birth in a new culture feels like from the inside, why supporting a new mother takes more than sending teddy bears and baby clothes, the guilt that can come with becoming a mother far from home, and what finding your people actually looks like when your village is on the wrong continent.

If you are pregnant abroad, navigating a foreign healthcare system, or trying to figure out how to build support when your village is on the wrong continent, this conversation is for you.

And then, while we were all watching the episode live, Chryssa Skoda, a Greek mother of one living in Finland, sent me a message about her own experience. She said something that goes straight to the reason I wrote Maternity Abroad.

In Finland, she explained that, in her experience, regardless of financial status, she had to give birth in a public hospital.

Jessica Gabrielzyk and Samar Karma podcast about the book Maternity Abroad

I had a wonderful time! Double chin laugh and all.

That is the sort of detail a standard pregnancy book is never going to prepare you for.

Those changes matter and sometimes they are the part nobody thought to warn you about. Also, somewhere during this conversation, we discovered that Chryssa and I both had big babies. Her message:

"By the way, we both had big babies! My son was 4,5 kilos, 51 cm and I delivered him naturally."

Excuse me. 4.5 kilos? Naturally? What a queen. 👑

This conversation was such an honor. Maternity Abroad was written for exactly this.

Thank you to Samar for giving me the space to talk about the book and these experiences.

I hope this episode reaches every mother in the UAE who has been navigating this alone.

The episode is out. Go watch it. 💛

Jessica Gabrielzyk

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Read the first 40 pages of Maternity Abroad for free
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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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