Ranjit Prepares for his Debut

This coming Sunday, Ranjit will finally enter society at his grandparents' grand Diwali party... in order to show the world that he's not just another pretty face, Ranjit has prepared a composition on his Fisher-Price piano... here is a sneak preview!



Yes, he is quite dedicated to his art, as you can see. He is SO dedicated in fact that the other night, when he was in one of his playful moods at 4 in the morning, I put him in his crib and went to bed, thinking he would play a little and then go back to bed. However, I woke up 40 minutes later to the sound of music coming from somewhere. When I reached Ranjit's room, I found that he had somehow traveled (the boy cannot crawl yet, mind you) from the head of his crib to the foot and was clanging away on the piano at 4:30 in the morning! Carnegie Hall, here he comes!!

Hooray Hooray Hooray

I'm not Christian or anything, but all I have to say is "Hallelujiah!" Ranjit has learned to fall asleep on his own! Finally! I think... perhaps I'm speaking too soon and tonight will be back to his old ways, but last night he fell asleep after 45 minutes on his own, then 6 minutes when he woke up for his 2:30am feeding, then 5 minutes after he woke up for no reason at 5:30am and another 5 minutes for his 9am nap! FINALLY, I'll be able to get a decent amount of sleep instead of spending hours rocking him, bouncing him, shush-ing until I can't shush no more until he finally gets to sleep.

The poor boy had so many tummy and skin problems when he was younger that every evening he would start crying and not stop until we soothed him to sleep... while this was definitely necessary at the time, I think we basically made him forget any self soothing skills that he had to begin with. So Ajit and I would bounce him in his bouncy, which worked really really well at first but then stopped being effective a couple weeks ago. Ajit's dad also built a wonderful gujarati jhoola for Ranjit, which he LOVED and put him into restful sleep almost immediately, so we transported it to our condo this weekend, using it for his naps as well as to get him to sleep at night. However, he would still get up in the middle of the night, WAY more than he had to. I began to panic a couple of nights ago when he would nurse in the middle of the night and STILL would need to be put in the jhoola after he was done eating and burping in order to go back to sleep. That used to be the way that he would sleep! I began thinking, what on earth would happen after the jhoola stopped working? How would I get him to sleep then?!

So I decided to take action yesterday. Earlier in the week, Ranjit and I had met up with my grad school friend Kusuma and her sweetie pie 5 month old baby Sarita this past week; Kusuma showed me the book "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Baby" by Dr. Weissbluth, one of the nation's leading sleep experts and gave me some excerpts from the book to read.

I was already familiar with his book since he is the head of the pediatric practice that Ranjit goes to and so I had already been following SOME of his advice, (except for the part about letting Ranjit sleep on his own). I read all 10 pages in 10 minutes and felt so empowered that I decided to try his advice! So I went out and bought the book and read it from start to finish in a day (doing most of my reading while I was trying to get him to sleep in his jhoola) and learned that not only was it necessary for my own wellbeing to get him to be able to sleep by himself, it was actually necessary for him to learn this skill now otherwise he would have trouble into his toddler and maybe even teen years! I was so motivated that I decided to try it right away... even if it meant that he would be crying for a couple of hours, which is what the norm is according to what I've heard. And it worked after only 45 minutes! They were the longest 45 minutes of my life (and probably his too, poor baby), but after that he fell asleep SO quickly on his own that I definitely feel every excruciating minute was worth it. I'm still using the jhoola to make sure that Ranjit's naps are long enough (he wakes up after 40 minutes usually, after which I put him in the jhoola to rock him back to sleep so that he gets in at least an hour), but he basically sleeps by himself now!

I know that the next time we go to see Ranjit's doctor I will seek out Dr. Weissbluth and shake his hand, he really knows what he's talking about! Unfortunately his writing skills are a bit shotty (he isn't very good at organizing his thouhts) but my goodness he has wonderful information in his book. I'm going to use his advice for the next 5 years for sure!

So thank you Dr. Weissbluth, thank you Kusuma, thanks to Ajit's dad, you all have helped set me on the path towards being a well-rested non-zombie mother!!