Woman in labor goes viral for working hard on her final exam
Nayzia Thomas said there wasn't much else to do.
— -- One woman, who was in labor for nearly 15 hours, knew exactly how to kill time -- complete her college's final exam.
Nayzia Thomas is a 19-year-old psychology major at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas.
When her water broke on Dec. 11, she knew that her final exam was due and had a few hours to spare as she was only two centimeters or 3/4 of an inch dilated. So Thomas took out her laptop and put the finishing touches on the research paper.
"After my exam was finished we kind of just walked around the hospital, did pain management, and tried to just kind of relax," she continued. "That’s really all you can do when you’re waiting for a baby to be born."
Her son, Anthony, was born at 1:30 p.m. the following day. She'd later learn that she had earned an A on the paper, finishing the semester with a 3.5 GPA.
Thomas tweeted a photo of herself finishing her final, with the caption: "My mom took this pic & it's the perfect explanation of my life. yes i'm about to have a baby, but final [season] ain't over yet."
The photo quickly went viral with more than 130,000 likes.
Thomas admits that school was "difficult because pregnancy is not just physical. It's mental. It's emotional."
"It takes more than just getting up and going to class to be successful in college," she added. "It takes a lot of mental preparation and there are days when ... you get defeated but the main thing is that you have to keep the strength."
Thomas credits her mother, Aisha Kelley, with teaching her how to persevere through difficult tasks.
"It comes from watching my mom. She has lupus and she's a single mom. Looking at my mom being able to overcome that; it's very commendable," Thomas said.
Kelley, 40, who's a mother to three adult children, said she's happy to have passed on that spirit to her daughter. "I came from strong women. That’s all I knew how to do is to be strong myself," she told ABC News.
And Kelley has more hopes for her youngest child.
"I just want to see her evolve," she added. "And just see her growth as a woman, as mother and just watching her put her love into her child."