Can I/should I attempt to alter the pattern of night bottle feeds?

[DangerMousey]

DS1 is 7 weeks old and formula fed. During the day he takes a bottle about every 3 hours, and is fed on demand. For the last couple of weeks we have introduced a loose 'bedtime' routine (bath, bottle, cuddle, bed in moses basket in bedroom) just before the bottle which he tends to have at around 8pm.

He usually (touch wood!) goes off to sleep very easily after this 8pm ish bottle, on his own, which is nice cos DH and I then get to have a bit of an evening - time for a quick bath before bed etc etc.

Since we introduced this bedtime routine he has stopped waking up for a bottle at 11pm/midnight ish and now seems to normally go through until about 3.30am/4am until his next feed. He does usually wake up and have a bit of a grizzle at about 2am but if we put his dummy in, he goes back down for another 90 mins or so.

After his 4am ish night feed however, he is very unsettled, grizzling off and on, and I am up and down continually from then until 7am, when he wants his breakfast bottle.

SO.....my question is: it's bloody great that he's happy to go almost 8 hours without a bottle (he is thriving and putting on loads of weight btw), but obviously I would rather they were a more sociable 8 hours!! Like 11pm-7am for example!

Should I try and force the issue and manipulate when he feeds in some way?? (and how on earth would i do this? I am not going to let him cry when he is obviously hungry)....or should I just ride it out and hope that sooner or later he also drops this 3-4am night feed? Or at least settles back nicely after it?

Any thoughts/experiences appreciated!

[DangerMousey]

Bump!