N’Jameh Russell-Camara collects stories, mostly about pregnancy. She believes the pandemic is changing how people bring children into their families, so she’s creating an archive for parents to look back on. “I’m going for celebration,” she says. “This is about the purity of sharing your stories so that someone else can learn from them. So that someone else can find the sweetness in them.”
That’s why Russell-Camara founded the Pandemic Pregnancy Project and showcased 21 stories she collected on WUWM in March. The stories are archived on the project’s website, which serves to enter this uniquely isolating moment for the world into the historical record, and she’ll be sharing more on Wisconsin Public Radio through June.
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The stories are not all happy: Many pregnant people couldn’t see their doctor until their second trimester, while others had to go to appointments alone. Camara recounts one participant who learned that if she caught COVID during her in vitro fertilization cycle, she would have to stop trying and wait a full year before starting over again.
“When people listen to pandemic stories, they are ready for the worst,” Russell-Camara says. “We want to offer a breath of fresh air, and maybe even a little bit of freedom and healing.”
Share your story at pandemicpregnancyproject@gmail.com.
