This mother delivered a baby and a PhD dissertation on the same day

At six weeks, Baby Enzo was part of a story of motherhood and tenacity that would make Superwoman applaud. Born a month before his due date on the same day his mother was scheduled to deliver her dissertation defense. I was physically prepared for a pregnancy. Mentally, my brain was not on a baby. So I was having a very emotional response to knowing that I was in labor, knowing that I had this defense like I was literally shaking. Tamia Brevard Rodriguez had everything planned out with staff and faculty at Rutgers University to examine standards black college women face on historically white campuses. Her plan had a name Operation dissertation before baby Good saying. But things went off schedule went to me. As water broke on the early morning of March 25th and baby Enzo was working on his own timetable to me. His wife rushed to their car after their doula told them to get moving as contractions increased. The drive on the Garden State Parkway to the hospital was a race against time. Dude was trying to tell me, like, don’t, don’t grunt them out. Like, you know, like, you know, just breathe. Let’s be like, and I’m like. Like this baby is coming every moment. I remember sort of the area that we were in as we were exiting the highway and the first one was coming off and we had flew through the red light and at this point I’m probably going 120 miles an hour. So I had three pushes. So the first one was baby’s head. He was crowning. Second push it was he was out, he was in my hand. Third one we were just we were just there once at the hospital. Enzo was checked out and all was good. But since Tamia was well rehearsed for a dissertation, she delivered her defense about 7 hours after Enzo came into the world. I was prepared for it. Like what? I do some final touches on the on the presentation, like I did the study. I had the support. I just needed to take a nap, take a shower and regroup. No one knew about the delivery until after the successful defense was complete. So Tamia delivered her baby and delivered her dissertation. And what is a mother’s story about a very special day? In Union, NJ Anthony Johnson, Channel 7 Eyewitness News.