Just remember - you are human and you have needs. Making a conscious choice to put aside those needs (some of which are biological imperatives, like sleep) for someone who cannot make or even understand such a choice is an incredibly selfless thing to do, but it's not easy.

I think we've all done things in sheer exhaustion that we would prefer not to have done, or that don't feel wholly consistent with a gentle parenting philosophy. And probably things will get to a point where we do them again. All we can do is learn from those things and try to implement ways of dealing with them more effectively.

Touching on what Just Me said, I guess what we have to ask ourselves, is what the benefit of a particular aspect of gentle parenting is to the child if that aspect unbalances the rest of the parenting equation. If you (or any parent) are so overwhelmed by long-term exhaustion that you cannot function properly or it affects your temperament in a way that is not just transient, for example, then perhaps it might be worthwhile to consider ways that allow you to start meeting your own needs whilst still following the guiding principles of gentle parenting.

I think Dr Jay Gordon (a US pro-attachment parenting paediatrician who has a great methodology of night weaning for co-sleepers that can be applied to non-co-sleepers as well) put it well when he said that a parent who has their own basic needs met is much better able to meet the needs of their child, and that there has to be some recognition of the needs of the rest of the family. I know in myself that when I am dead tired, I can't run around with DS, I can't engage with him in the same way that I do when I've had a half decent night's sleep. We spent so long in a day trying to get him to sleep (he would sometimes take up to three hours of rocking to return to sleep after a night wake, and it frustrated him as much as anybody that he couldn't sleep, he was constantly exhausted), that the overwhelming focus was on sleep - we didn't have time for anything else. I started to take the approach that I could be a better parent to DS if we were both well rested, and looked at ways that I could encourage him to learn better sleep habits that did not conflict with the principles of attachment parenting (admittedly, my DS was a bit older than yours when I did this).

Incidentally, we have never co-slept either, and after a week of a sick DS who has shared our bed I better understand the wisdom of not sharing a bed with a child who will, over the course of the night, utilise every square inch of bed space, and get quite annoyed if someone else is currently occupying any of that space. I mention it because gentle parenting is a guiding principle, it's not a set of boxes that must be ticked. I have never felt any qualms about not co-sleeping, because it doesn't work for DS, and it doesn't work for the rest of our family. I can be a gentle parent in other ways. So to answer your original question about conflicts - if something conflicts between myself and DS, if it is a little conflict, then I deal with it. But if it's a big conflict that unbalances everything else, then I look at ways where that conflict can be resolved in a gentle way.

Other posters have given great advice on how to deal with the difficulty. My advice is a little different - if you are finding yourself at a point where you are unable to function or that you are spending a completely unbalanced amount of energy on one aspect of your DS' development (eg: sleep), you can change the 'routine' and still gentle parent, and not CC. It's all in the way you do it.