Forgiving myself

So after a few weeks feeling a bit overwhelmed - and frankly a bit down - I seem to be going back to a slightly healthier routine. The last month gone by on a flash and between sleepless nights with a teething little boy and mummy fighting a stomach bug somehow I completely lost control of daytime routine and found myself relaying on the dummies for all different things and having to rock Harry to sleep.
Following that thought I also found myself feeling really frustrated.
See the thing is that we all have certain expectations before the baby is born and coming from a rather large family I was hoping to mirror certain things I've seen on my sibling's families. Some of my nieces have never touched a dummy and they would easily fall asleep anywhere at anytime.
I had it all thought out; no dummy, no rocking to sleep, give him loads of cuddles but put him down once he is fed and so on.
I know I know, this is probably a  place where most mums have been but I did feel really angry at myself when I realized that once little guy got into the habit of feeding to sleep at bedtime, the daytime kips were becoming harder and harder and although I used to think it was ok to rock him every now and then -whenever he wasn't so well or just having a real hard time falling asleep - turns out once we both found the easier way for a kip he no longer wanted to know of falling asleep on his own.
Add to all that, teething at 4 months and the only thing that seems to help is the "forbidden" pacifier. On the one hand I'm actually lucky he took the dummy at all, I've seen some mums with early teethers and babies that won't sleep during the day and they would give anything for their little ones to take the dummy but on the other hand there's the fact that once he got a bit dependent on it he will eventually wake up during the night and will need it to be able to go back to sleep. Since he sleeps in his own room that means I have to get up a couple of times a night to attend to his claims.
Now I'm not fooling myself here. I know that when I say he needs something that mainly means that I got used to the fact that it is easier to rock him than to walk into his bedroom every 2 minutes for a whole hour trying to make him sleep.
Anyways, after a few days I just gave in to the fact that he will grow out of it - at least that's my hope and I'm holding on to it - and eventually I'll be able to ween him off the dummy and teach how to go to sleep on his own. After all there is just no point on kicking myself for doing all I can to comfort my baby. It does take a lot of effort however i still stand to the fact that he is only a little guy who is working hard to grow and learn all he can in a very short period of time, the least I can do is to try my best to make the journey a bit easier for him.
Hear hear for lots and lots of cuddles as he will soon grow out of it and I'll be the one wanting to rock him to sleep.