Video shows mom race from giving birth to her NC graduation. TikTok can’t get enough
A woman raced from giving birth to graduating with her doctorate — all in 24 hours, a whirlwind video shows.
TikTok users couldn’t get enough of the nine-second clip highlighting the North Carolina mom’s back-to-back milestones. Many took to the social media platform to say the video left them feeling inspired and amazed.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so proud of someone I don’t know,” one person wrote.
“Sheeesh…you accomplished more in 24hrs than some do in their life,” another person commented.
The star of the video was Abby Bailiff, who was pregnant as she prepared to get her doctorate degree in nursing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. With a due date in late April, she said she figured she would have time between giving birth and going to her May 4 graduation.
But her son-to-be, Bodie, “had other plans,” she told UNC Greensboro’s School of Nursing in a news release.
Instead, Bailiff went into labor and delivered Bodie on May 3, just 24 hours before she was set to take the stage at graduation. Then, the staff at Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, where Bailiff has worked as an intensive care unit nurse, reportedly helped to make her dream come true.
“Her colleagues at Moses Cone worked to get her discharged from the hospital as soon as possible on May 4,” the university wrote. “They knew she was scheduled to graduate that day, and they wanted to help get her there in time.”
Bailiff’s family members also supported her decision to go to her graduation, and her husband agreed to stay home with the newborn. When Bailiff got to the ceremony, she said she was overcome with what she had accomplished.
“I remember walking into the gymnasium for graduation, and everybody’s just cheering and standing and there’s a huge crowd,” Bailiff told her alma mater. “I don’t know if it was a mix of the hormones or just how overwhelmed I was feeling, but I just started crying.”
After the ceremony, Bailiff’s sister, Hannah, posted footage of the unexpected sequence of events on social media. The TikTok video starts with Bailiff in a hospital bed before she’s seen holding a baby and getting hooded during graduation.
“And that’s on girl power,” said the caption of the video, which got almost 1 million views within about one week.
“I want other women to know, especially people that are in school and they get pregnant and they want to do this or they want to do that, we can do anything we want to do,” Bailiff said. “We just have to set our minds to it. I know that sounds cliché, but that whole video kind of just put it into perspective.”
