A woman who gave birth twice while working to earn her nursing degree is set to graduate on Sunday, May 12 — Mother’s Day.
Rebecca Iannucci learned she was pregnant with her first daughter just a few days after she was accepted into a graduate nurse practitioner program at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. Then, just two weeks before her anticipated graduation, she gave birth to her second daughter. Now she will celebrate both her motherhood and her degree on Mother’s Day.
Iannucci married her husband Marc in 2020, becoming a stepmom to his two daughters. After earning her bachelor’s degree in 2021, she was accepted into the graduate nursing program. When she found out she was pregnant, she didn’t think twice. “I was like, I guess we’re doing this, you know,” she said.
Not only was she a stepmom, attending a graduate program, and pregnant, but she was also working as the assistant school nurse manager for a public school district and was teaching clinics for licensed practical nursing students at Lincoln Technical Institute. She told CT NBC that putting her education on hold was not an option.
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“There were definitely times where I thought about it. You know, life gets chaotic, but I never took any steps in that direction. A lot of weekends, I would go sit at Panera or the library and study, and kind of take my time that way,” she said.
She also explained, “Being a mom, a stepmom, a wife and somebody who wants to work, I just had to learn to prioritize things day by day. Sometimes, the priority is that the kids have their afterschool programs. Then, sometimes, it’s just prioritizing myself.”
Though it was a challenge, with the support of her family and the professors and staff at Quinnipiac, she has overcome any obstacles she faced — including her second daughter being born ahead of schedule as she prepared for her final exams.
“You know funny enough, she came 10 days early, and I was expecting to make it to finals and the rest of my schooling stuff, and she kind of, you know, on her own time said, ‘Mom, I’m ready,'” said Iannucci.
She said having a newborn again has led to sleep deprivation and she has had to learn to balance her priorities again. But her professors helped by pushing her final exams back to the next week so she could heal from labor and delivery.
She tells other women, “Having that belief in yourself, that you can do it, and looking at your children and knowing that it’s for them, it really makes all of it possible and all of the hardship worth it.”
Happy Mother’s Day.
