I didn't co-sleep with either of my children (it's just not my thing, and neither of them liked to be cuddled when they were tired - yes weird I know!) but from my observations it can work very well where both parents are happy to do it long-term. That is, if mum and dad see it as a way of life for their family everyone tends to be happy with it. Where problems seem to arise is where mum resorts to co-sleeping out of desperation and dad is never really keen on it from the outset, and both think its just a "short term" thing. Invaraibly, the baby becomes (understandably!) very used to co-sleeping so it can be very hard to go back to "normal".

So I guess the gist of it is - if you see co-sleeping as normal for you, that's great for both you and bub. But if its used as a way to get you through the night you might come to regret your decision.

As a different approach, both our boys slept in a cot in our room til they were quite old (Flynn was around 7 months and Ollie was in til he was over 1 year). It worked for us well as they both settled quite well (though staying with a baby and patting them to sleep can be quite tiring in the inital days) and both not deal with quite a bit of noise while they sleep (our ensuite is next to our bedroom so from day one they had to sleep through us walking around the room, turning on the light, having a shower next door and, obviously, DTD!). Your baby is very, very little and it may take her some time to fall asleep anywhere other than in your safe arms, but there are some gentle methods to getting a baby to sleep in their own bed which don't involve controlled crying. HTH.