Eight weeks and four days

Just had a sudden pang while reading a book where a mother with a five week old baby was quoted. Alice will never - never! - be that age again. Already she's passed through so many stages, so many firsts, and she's not been alive two months yet. So even though I'm far from keen to repeat the experience of giving birth just yet, I do now understand why most people have more than one child - the miracle seems to be that they can usually stick at just two or three!

I'm just looking at Alice sleeping and considering again the issue of a 'routine'. I'm torn between letting her dictate when she wants to sleep, when to eat and when to play, and trying to establish some sort of pattern. We're told that babies respond well to routine and find it reassuring, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it's really *parents* who need it. I would certainly prefer it if Alice slept peacefully and for long stretches at night, rather than in the day, and I'm worried that I've ruined all our chances of achieving this by not keeping her more wakeful during daylight. But it's a vicious circle - if she and therefore I have been up half the night, I am usually only too grateful for a long sleep in the day for both of us. And in any case, the amount of sleep and spacing of feeds in the day doesn't seem to affect her sleep or feeds at night - the whole thing is entirely random as far as I can tell.

Should I allow the randomness to continue and trust her to find her own routine in time? Or is it time to provide guidance? (I also can't figure out the apparent contradiction between the advice to always 'feed on demand' and the advice to establish a routine. How can we implement 'bedtime' rituals like feed-bath-story-cuddle-cot when we don't know when she'll want her evening feed ?)