Co sleeping dilemma

[smellmel22]

I'm after opinions from people who have done this and how it ended up.

Dc1 was a great sleeper. In his own room at 8 months old. Rarely needed to come in with me unless sick. And always went back in his own bed without issue. We had a few blips along the way with regressions when he was tiny but he was always great at independent sleeping and now at tween age he's still brilliant.

Dd2 is another story. She's now 2 and has never slept in her own room. She just hated it. Consequently she has a small cot bed in our room which she will drop off in but 95% of the time she wakes up in the middle of the night and gets in our bed. This is ok but she wriggles a lot and we tend to have broken sleep but I've always been of the opinion that no kids are the same and some need that contact at night more than others. Happy to do it.

However I'm wondering if I'm making issues for her later on. She seems to always need to be touching me when she's in our bed, either rubbing my arm or pulling my hair or hand down my top! It's like she needs that reassurance that I'm there. Will she always need this? Is she going to struggle to sleep independently when she's a bit older? Am I doing her no favours by allowing this? I only doubt myself because of how good my first dc was and he never did any of this. It's obviously benefited him (and us) to be an independent sleeper from early on.

So if you co slept did your kids ever manage to sleep alone without issues? If so, when? And was it a struggle to make the transition into their own room? This can't continue forever as she'll soon need a bigger bed which won't fit in our room. Unsure what to do for the best.

My kids are 30 and 12.

Both shared my bed until they didn't want to any more. The eldest opted for her own room at 2 yrs old while the youngest was a thousand years old about 10 the last time he slept with us. Edit: just to be clear, both of them had perfectly lovely bedrooms from birth! They just knew they would never be turned away from a family-sleep setup.

They're both really lovely well-adjusted people and although we all spent years playing musical beds I honestly wouldn't change a thing.

Importantly though, my DH is very comfortable with co-sleeping and with us taking turns to bed-share vs sleeping alone in the spare room (as well as sneaking around like teenagers to have sex in a child-free room!)

If any of us had felt worn down by the sleeping arrangements we would have changed things but never once has it seemed like co-sleeping had a negative effect on the kids. Rather than make them clingy it seems to have done the opposite... they're markedly more independent and comfortable in the world than their peers are at their respective ages.