My 4.5mo has never been a great sleeper. His older brother and sister slept through at 8 weeks and although I know I'm not supposed to compare the kids and that every child is different, I won't lie in saying I was sort of hoping for a similar journey this time around.
He goes to bed between 7-8pm after a bath. He is brilliant at this part and goes straight to sleep. As his last feed is just before this time, I tend to dream feed him between 10-11pm before I go to bed (he's ff). Again, he goes back to bed wonderfully. And then it all goes pear shaped. From about 2am he wakes up crying. I feed him and he'll go back into his cot fine but doesn't really settle then for the rest of the night. He'll wake up screaming every 10-20 minutes and only stops when I pick him up. He falls back to sleep the instant I give in and put him in our bed. I normally try to hold out until 4am for this so I'm not giving in straight away. I know he's not hungry at this point because of the instant sleep, before he has even touched our mattress properly.
My question is, how bad is this practice really? I don't tend to sleep brilliantly when he's with us because I'm worried about rolling on him or the duvet ending up over his face, but I do get longer periods of sleep this way than when he is in his cot. I also don't want to 'spoil' him as such and have this be our 'normal' routine. I know the advice is that you can't spoil babies his age, but I know of 5 and 6 year olds and even 9 year olds who still co sleep and I just can't allow that to happen.
If I do continue this early morning co sleep pattern, how do I get out of it further down the road and at what age should I stop in order that I don't have a 6 year old climbing into bed with me every morning at 4am?