A determined 8-month-old pregnant woman named Tamiah Brevard-Rodriguez gave birth to her son on the way to the hospital and she successfully defended her PhD thesis on the same day.
44-year-old Tamiah was preparing for her doctoral defense and was almost at the school when her water unexpectedly broke. Rushing back to the hospital with her partner, her plans took an extraordinary turn as she gave birth to her baby in the passenger seat of her car.
Initially, she had made plans a month before her dissertation, which she named “Operation Dissertation Before Baby.” The plan included her completing her dissertation and having her baby in time to celebrate graduation and the summer with family.
“Both were my 40th birthday presents to myself. I said, I need to finish this doctorate, and I need to have my last baby,” she said.
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When she and her partner got to the hospital with their baby, doctors and nurses checked him out, and they claimed she had already done most of the birthing process in the car, and she just needed to rest.
At the same time, her partner discussed rescheduling the meeting with her mentor. However, she worried that if they rescheduled, it would not happen in the time frame she needed to graduate this year.
“As I was laying there, I was just thinking to myself, ‘I can do it. The baby’s here. Let’s just get this over with,” she said. Tamiah’s partner brought her clothes, a laptop, and a makeup bag, and after she took her nap and ate, she was ready to defend her thesis.
As she logged onto her laptop from her hospital bed, the only person who knew about her delivery earlier that morning was her mentor, who also did not want anyone to give her sympathy, so he kept quiet.
Tamiah gave a well-detailed presentation with the Rutgers University background, which lasted for twenty minutes, and when it was over, she took down her Rutgers background on Zoom and revealed she was in the hospital.
She declined to share the news until after her defense to make sure the committee was not swayed by what she had just been through. With her defense successfully done, Tamiah was awarded her PhD in Education at Rutgers University, United States.
Tamiah’s dissertation focused on the beauty pressures placed on Black college women while enrolled at predominantly White educational institutions.
“In my study, a lot of Black girls said, ‘I cannot go to school in pajamas, though I see my other peers go to school in pajamas or in sweatshirts and baggy clothes.’ They always have to be presentable, because for them being presentable equates to them being capable,” she said.
Tamiah earned her bachelor’s degree in Communication from the Rutgers School of Communication and Information and a master’s degree in higher education administration at New York University, both in the United States.
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