Labor of Love - Ruth Zielinski promotes the benefits of midwifery and nursing
“I saw my first baby being born when I was eight, and I knew then that I wanted to be a midwife,” says Ruth Zielinski. “They hired me for 25 cents an hour to wash the babies. I loved it.”
Zielinski’s childhood experience in a mission hospital in the United Arab Emirates (then called the Trucial States), where her father was working as a minister, fueled her early passion for midwifery. She spent a lot of time at the hospital, helping out by putting pills in envelopes and washing babies.
As she tells it, Zielinski’s inchoate dreams of becoming a doctor would have a somewhat “lackluster start.” After an unhappy stint as a pre-med student, Zielinski switched to nursing. She went on to earn her R.N.-B.S.N. degree and completed her master’s in midwifery several years later at the University of Michigan.
Zielinski returned to U-M for a Ph.D. in nursing in 2005 as a non-traditional student. Finding herself back in school in her early 40s had benefits and drawbacks.
“I came with a ton of clinical experience and depth of understanding about women’s issues,” Zielinski explains. “But I also had to juggle the responsibilities of adult life and commuting from Kalamazoo.”
She remembers a time in her first year of the program, sitting in a sociology seminar taught by a professor who believed that nurses “just gave shots to people,” feeling deeply that she didn’t belong in graduate school. Reflecting on this experience years later, Zielinski comments poignantly, “I bet a lot of Ph.D. students have that feeling of not belonging.”
