We still haven't had a chance to try the early bedtime yet. By the time I get home from work, make dinner, have a little play time, etc., etc., it's a challenge to even have him in bed by 8 p.m.. It seems so many of your LO's have such early bedtimes (6 to 7 p.m.)-- I'm not sure how you guys do that, and get to spend any time with your babies.
DS did, in his very early days, sleep until 6:30 to 7 a.m. But each time he dropped a night waking, he'd wake up 30 minutes earlier in the morning. By the time he started sleeping through the night (at about 5.5 months or so), we were getting up at 5:15 to 5:30. We were on a 7:30 p.m. to 5:15-5:30 a.m. schedule for almost a year. Earlier/later bedtimes did not affect wake-up times at all, until at about 13-14 mths when we tried a later bedtime (8 p.m.) one more time, and he started sleeping til about 6 His daytime sleep doesn't ever seem to impact night time sleep -- at least not as far as I can tell, but perhaps I haven't tracked it closely enough?
I guess the reality is that no-one can ever tell you whether your child is sleeping enough. Liam has always had really good sleep habits (in that he falls asleep on his own, in his own bed, w/o any props). I know he's perfectly able to put himself back to sleep, so I've got to figure that if he's awake at the crack of dawn, then it's because he's slept enough (which is what DH always says!) but I can't help obsessing anyway (probably because I'm so sleep deprived myself!). We're starting to think about baby #2, which is terrifying in some respects. I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever get 8 hrs of sleep a night again.