"The answer to my baby is not in the books..."

"The answer to my baby is not in the books. I know, I read EVERYTHING; from the hippiest, gentlest mothering tract to the hardcore Victorian nanny schedules, but nothing worked, they could not solve my baby. We had a really hard first couple of years and looking back I can now see the daft mistakes we made and give myself a break about the stuff we did right and the stuff we did to survive. On balance, I think number one wasn't easy, but we sure as hell didn't make it any easier on her or ourselves. We parented out of panic - "why is she crying?" we would screech at each other "why won't she sleep?" I would sob to my mum.  Now I know(really know and accept, rather than that abstract knowledge of having it read it in a book) that babies cry and in the main they don't sleep for periods or when you want them too and you have to give yourself a break and just go with it. Watching every breath, believing that if you do everything right (according to that week's manual of childcare) or keep exactly to some spurious routine you imagine you have established (for less than a day) and insisting to your partner that if you, and only you, pat, hold, jig, and sing to her wearing a certain jumper and walk in a particular route round the bed, she will SLEEP - doesn't make a blind bit of difference. The lack of sleep does really mess with your head and its hard to relax, when an uninterrupted night seems like it would solve everything (it doesn't you just feel worse the next night when she wakes again!), but she isn't a problem to be solved, she was a baby and pretty much she did what babies do. And pretty much, I think we did what parents do." (Anthea, London)