People sometimes ask which book to start with. Honest answer: it does not matter. This is not Lord of the Rings.
If you are pregnant abroad right now, start with Maternity Abroad. It is the practical one. What to ask your doctor, how the system works, what nobody tells you about giving birth somewhere new, and why the pharmacy will not understand you no matter how confidently you point.
If you have a toddler adjusting to a new country, the My First American Coloring Book is for her. 101 illustrations of everyday American life, so the school bus and the mailbox and the pumpkin on the porch feel familiar before she has to navigate them herself. Comes with crayons. Does not come with the part where she adapts faster than you and you have complicated feelings about that.
And if the logistics are mostly sorted, the robot vacuum has earned its keep, and you have started noticing something quieter underneath it all, the sense that you are not quite who you were and you genuinely cannot pinpoint when that happened, that is Parenting Unpacked.
And if you are wondering why I wrote them, here is the honest answer…I used to be ashamed to say it but not anymore: selfishness. I could not find anything like them, so I wrote them. I just kept writing the next thing I needed, and apparently my life has a three act structure.
Start wherever you are.
Jessica Gabrielzyk
