Dear mother, do not quit your job just yet

Approximately four months ago, Zamarad Twaha Mukitte gave birth to twins- a boy and a girl. When her maternity leave ended, she resumed work as a member of the cabin crew on Emirates Airlines. Based in Dubai, Mukitte’s working hours are not fixed. Each day is different.
“I try not to be away from my twins for more than two days. Every day as I leave the house for work, I try to soak up every second to get one last full dose of my twins,” Mukitte says.
A first time mother, Mukitte had to go through counselling to get used to staying away from her babies. At home, she leaves her babies with two nannies, each assigned to one baby.

“It was hard at the beginning. The counsellor told me that although the hardest time to leave my babies was in infancy, babies younger than six months can do fine without me for a night or two if I am not nursing. I was told that before six months, babies have not yet grasped the concept of object permanence and that I exist even when I am not with them. I got stronger day by day,” she adds.

Trusting babies with caretakers
It matters how you treat your baby caretakers. This determines the care they will give to your babies when you are not around. She is considering increasing the nannies’ pay because they have sleepless nights.
She chose to employ people older than her because of their experience in looking after babies.

“I can never go back home without gifts for them. They are so used to it that one day they told me to stop carrying them gifts but the secret to happy babies is in how I treat the people who take care of them in my absence,” Mukitte says, adding that she foregoes the comfort of her home to make ends meet for the good of her babies.
She urges young mothers to forget the notion of women depending on their husbands for survival but rather to work and sustain their families and have something of their own.

When illness kicks in
The first time Mukitte was told that her boy had a cold was one of her worst.
“I started panicking and calling after every few minutes to know how he was doing. To make it worse, he also developed a fever. I thought to myself that if these illnesses can make an adult weak, what about my young baby?” Mukitte recalls.

Resuming with work after leave
Mukitte was just getting used to staying home with her babies when her maternity leave came to an end. Then again, the thought of waking up at 6am and racing off to work after staying up all night with crying children seemed impossible to her.

“No matter how long and hard you have thought about your decision to return to work and how sure you are that it is the right choice, you need to be prepared for mixed emotions.
You might feel guilty about leaving your babies in someone else’s care but you should work for them to live,” she says, adding that she sought counsel from experienced adults on how to handle thoughts of leaving her twins at home.

In the end, it was her craving for a sense of self-worth and the thrill of solving work-related issues as well as the challenge of leading others that gave Mukitte strength to return to work.
Staying home was not fulfilling enough for her, thus the need to get back on her feet. She advises first time mothers not to make big decisions about work in the first few weeks of motherhood. In her view, new mothers should allow themselves time to adapt to the situation and take one day at a time. Your heart will lead you to the best answer.

With her twins just four months old, Mukitte says she is still working through the transition of staying away from her twins.
“Some weeks are better than others. What keeps me going is that I try to focus less on the fact that I am burning the candle at both ends and more on just trying to enjoy the brilliant light,” she explains, remembering a scene where she slept with her twins glued to her chest and once when she had to meet a friend for lunch and the twins slept all through the meal giving her much needed mummy time.