If you don't take care of yourself you can't take care of your baby, and if you are both on a mutually-reinforcing difficult-sleep cycle that's not good for either of you. I loved what attachment parenting I was able to do but not all people attach in the same way or style; there is variation even in primate behaviour, and in human societies a baby isn't attached all the time to one person, but to individuals in a group of trusted persons. I'm just commenting not to chide you but to hope you can not beat yourself up about this. Sleep is what your small person needs for their brain and emotional development; and reassuring them into sleeping for longer and longer periods eventually can work really well. But you must have sleep yourself.
Routines can be helpful to babies who temperamentally find them reassuring rather than an irritation. Mine - I found by experimentation - definitely wanted his mealtimes to be on the minute, and his morning naps also, but his afternoon naps less so. If he ate dinner even 20 minutes late his bedtime would be affected by up to an hour and a half, but if we kept to his best time he would go to sleep earlier and stay asleep longer. (And by 'eating dinner' that was of course BF when he was teeny, but this pattern was fairly clear early on: his feeding times were sacrosanct, as far as he was concerned: so we ended up in a routine.)
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Date: 2011-03-14 11:20 am (UTC)Routines can be helpful to babies who temperamentally find them reassuring rather than an irritation. Mine - I found by experimentation - definitely wanted his mealtimes to be on the minute, and his morning naps also, but his afternoon naps less so. If he ate dinner even 20 minutes late his bedtime would be affected by up to an hour and a half, but if we kept to his best time he would go to sleep earlier and stay asleep longer. (And by 'eating dinner' that was of course BF when he was teeny, but this pattern was fairly clear early on: his feeding times were sacrosanct, as far as he was concerned: so we ended up in a routine.)
xx