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I think their idea is that babies will actually sleep longer with an earlier bedtime, but that definitely isn't the case for all babies (including mine! she would sleep 10-12hrs regardless of when she goes to bed and if I tried an earlier bedtime she would just fight sleep until her usual time) I do notice that night sleep is impacted when they are trying to drop a nap - maybe your LO is trying to transition to 2 naps?

I didn't read the book, but my mom suggested an earlier bedtime when J dropped from 3 naps to 2, I think around 6 months, and it worked like magic. It doesn't seems to matter when he falls asleep - he's up for the day between 7-8 whether he goes down at 6:30, 7:30, or 9. He was much happier and slept more solidly with a 7-7:30 PM bedtime though. I'd recommend early bedtime - it might not impact wake up time at all, if you're lucky.

What is his sleep like now that it's gone haywire? I think part of Weissbluth's advice is that, in the long term, an early bedtime is going to maximize sleep. So while putting him down closer to 6:30 or 7 might initially result in an earlier wake up, once his circadian rhythms settle into that 4-6 month sleep pattern, he will end up dropping that early wake time, and giving you better sleep than if you continued on the urgent path and the earlier wake up decreased overall sleep.

That said, so much advice hasn't proven right for our kid. So trust your instinct on whether your kid just doesn't fit that mold.

@BadgerMom: Ah, ok. I think you might actually have the exact scenario Weissbluth is talking about. LO might just be regulating to an earlier wake up (say around 6:30 for the day). And because of the later bedtime he is getting tired which results in an even earlier wake up. So by putting him down a little earlier you might see him go from sleeping 8:30-5:30 to sleeping from 7:00-6:30, hence the earlier bedtime getting you more sleep (but with the days of the 8 am wake up being over). The sporadic days of sleeping later are part of what he describes in the book, basically saying it is the result of exhaustion.

Not sure if that makes any sense the way I explained it, but that was my take away from HSHHC. That said, I have struggled with LO's sleep since week 1 and have found Weissbluth's advice to apply to us about 70% of the time.

@BadgerMom: I would read it. He gives a lot of specific examples about schedules and how exactly sleep cycles work. I can't say it's really helped us "solve" that many problems (what we've used has worked but we're a long way from "good" sleep), but it has helped us understand what is happening and what we want to be working towards.