At the moment we use a combination of an amby hammock and co-sleeping.
For the first two months Yasin slept next to the bed in the bassinet insert for a 3-wheel pram. When he started to grow out of it we looked around for another option. I didn't want to put him in the cot in another room because I liked the ease of having him next to me for middle of the night feeds and I also found it reassuring to be able to hear him at night.
I had seen hammocks mentioned a few times so I looked into them a bit further and they really seemed to make sense to me.
Yasin is quite a lively baby who never wants to sleep if there might be something more interesting on offer but with the hammock he started self-settling without any intervention from us. Unfortunately, after we took him on a couple of holidays without the hammock he stopped doing that and now he needs to be bounced to sleep most of the time.
Even though I would love to lie down with him and give him a cuddle until he goes to sleep he really seems to prefer his hammock . He seems very fond of his hammock and definatly knows that its his sleepy place. When we go to his grand-parents they seldom let him sleep (Afghanis let thier kids run around until all hours while I think they should to bed early - its an area of contention!) and when we get home and put him in his hammock he sighs a big sigh of relief and goes straight to sleep. It really quite cute.
Most nights he goes to sleep in his hammock and ends up in our bed. This is mainly because I feed him lying down and I often go back to sleep towards the end of a feed and also he wakes up at six but if I bring him into bed I can often get an extra hours sleep (precious stuff in our house). We used to co-sleep more but he started waking me up every hour or so for a snack so I decided that for my own sanity it would be better if I made more of an effort to stay awake and put him back in his hammock after his feeds. Also I suspect that since I'm quite a restless sleeper I was waking him up. Another reason that I've cut back on the amount of co-sleeping in our house is that if DH comes home at night and finds Yasin in the bed he will sleep in the lounge so he doesn't disturb us which means that if he has alot of night-time commitments he can end up sleeping in the lounge for almost a week at a time and I miss him. DH and I both find that we sleep more deeply if Yasin is not in the bed so we wake up more refreshed and better able to deal with Yasin.
For now the combination of co-sleeping and hammock is working for us although I would be happier and better rested if Yasin would go back to self-settling and started sleeping through soon.
I'm really hoping that sleeping through arrives before he grows out of the hammock and has to move into his cot.
My MIL was horrified that we co-slept and tried to talk DH out of it on the grounds that it was dangerous. Some of my friends were also a bit funny about it but now they've started doing it themselves .
My cat is not a fan of co-sleeping because Yasin has moved into the place where he used to sleep but he has found a new spot behind my knees.