Maybe co-sleeping is great for some families, maybe not for others. My kids (4 and 2) are impossible to sleep next to, they wriggle and kick and force me to the edge of the bed. In their own rooms they sleep just fine but they are still the primary cause of any bad sleep patterns I have.
I consider both my children to be fairly good sleepers but they still get up at 6am every day no matter what and when one of them is sick, or teething, or just too wired to sleep then multiple wake ups per night are possible, even if they go back to sleep without intervention I still wake up myself.
I could do any number of things to help improve my own sleep patterns but they are all moot until my kids get older.
In terms of getting up too early in the morning some friends of mine have had good success with a Gro-Clock which gives children a visual indicator of when it's ok to get up:
Yep, we hear our daughter shuffling around in bed, sighing and generally being restless and then at bang on 7am there's the sound of her getting out of bed and running in to our room shouting "Mummy, Daddy, the sun came up!"
No chance of co-sleeping. Daughter likes to sleep diagonally when in our bed and spends most of the night kicking me and pawing at my wife's face/hair. Joy.
Luckily she has pretty much slept through the night (7pm to 7am) from 3 months old. This was good until ~2 years old when she started waking in the night and wanting to sleep in our bed. Having to put her back again and again until it sinks in isn't good for sleep. That has mostly settled down but then being 3 she's in the final stages of potty training so she's up occasionally in the night to want to go to the toilet (as she becomes aware of the need to wee) but it shouldn't be long before she's doing that all on her own (although I'll still probably wake up from the noise of her clattering around).
I consider both my children to be fairly good sleepers but they still get up at 6am every day no matter what and when one of them is sick, or teething, or just too wired to sleep then multiple wake ups per night are possible, even if they go back to sleep without intervention I still wake up myself.
I could do any number of things to help improve my own sleep patterns but they are all moot until my kids get older.