Mother sits Cambridge final exams 28 hours after giving birth to first child

7 July DailyMail

A student has graduated from Cambridge University with first class honours - having sat her final exams only 28 hours after having a baby.

Isobel Cohen, 33, had to leave daughter Beatrice in intensive care while she sat her practical criticism paper in her dressing gown and slippers in hospital. She then completed her Shakespeare and the Greek tragedies exam the next day in the hospital.Despite the exhaustion of labour and the final weeks of her pregnancy, she secured a first class honours degree in English from the University's Lucy Cavendish College. Yesterday she admitted giving birth and sitting her finals in the same couple of days was 'slightly insane'.

She said: 'I wonder how I held it together and got through them because now I'm into full-blown "nappy brain". While my concentration and memory were not as good as they might have been, I could still do things I needed to do and retain enough information to write decent essays.

'At the time it seemed like a perfectly legitimate thing to do but now I look back and think it's slightly insane.'Miss Cohen, a former dancer from Cambridge, turned down the opportunity to study at the city's university when she finished her A-levels.

But she later took up a place to study English at Lucy Cavendish College. She said the pregnancy in her final year was a 'total surprise'. She was offered the chance to apply for a DDH 'deemed to have deserved honours' instead of attempting her exams, but she decided to go ahead.

'Maybe I was being desperately obsessive but I knew whatever happened I should be able to get a better result than what the university would give me if I didn't take the paper,' she said. She added that she hoped the baby, like many first-borns would come late. But a scan showed Beatrice may have had a digestive tract disorder so doctors at Adenbrooke's Hospital arranged for Isobel to be induced.

She was born weighing 6lb10oz after a difficult labour. Twenty-eight hours later, at 2pm on May 24, Isobel sat her exam. She said: 'I was sitting in a hospital room in my gown attached to a catheter.