Stopping nighttime bottle feed for 8 month old.

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I hope I'm not replicating an existing thread, I've had a look and can't find the advice I need. DS is nearly 8 months. He is on 3 meals a day and 600ml (3 bottles) a day. He goes to sleep at 7pm and wakes crying anytime between 12 and 2. At this point we have been picking him up, taking him into bed and giving him an increasingly watery bottle (on advice of HV). He is now having 150ml with only two scoops formula and downs it. Then goes back to sleep and wakes at 4.30, when I usually give him his morning bottle out of desperation for a bit more sleep (we both work full time, up at 6am and home at 6.30pm.) last night I tired to go cold turkey on the midnight bottle, and he screamed hysterically for half an hour (i was there the whole time singing to him and patting him) until I gave in and provided his milk/water. It seems like he wants the cuddles more than the milk, and I just don't know how to stop it. My DP and I both desperately need sleep, but I worry DS misses us during the day and needs the cuddles at night. Should I just change the bottle to water? I've tried this before and he'll cry for ages when I put him down and then keep waking throughout the night. Any advice appreciated.

You could try giving a dream feed before you go to bed and then work on getting rid of the early morning feed. I dropped the milk by an ounce every few days (rather than making it weaker with water) until it got to the stage that ds stopped waking for it.

I figured that ds had got used to the amount of fluid so turning it into water would not stop him waking. he had to get used to progressively less liquid instead.

We recently dropped the interaction during the night down a new notch every week or two and then stopped completely, and it felt fairly pain-free. DS is 7mo, started nursery recently as I'm going back to work on Monday so needed to stop the night feeds!!

To start with I pushed the feed that came around 12ish as late as I could - I tried to push it half an hour later every couple of days until it merged with the 4am feed.
I simply refused to feed him until later, but I picked up and cuddled etc.

I then did the same with the 4am feed until it was a reasonable time (around 6:30 for us). Still picked up and cuddled, just no feeding.

Then we tried not picking up anymore, just a few words and patting.
This was going well, but he was still waking for his dummy - until I left him to whinge for a few mins one night and I heard him scrabble around and then the distinctive Maggie Simpson sucking noise! He's slept surrounded by 4 dummies, in his own room for the last 2 weeks and he's no longer shouting for us between 7pm to 6am - hooray!!

My mum swears that she only had to give me water for a few nights before I gave up, but my DS is a bottle refuser so it wasn't an option!

Thanks very much, all that advice is really useful. I think it's a good idea to drop the amount of milk gradually rather than watering it down, as he obviously doesn't care if its watery I had thought about a dream feed around 10.30, it's worth a go, and also trying to hold out on the 4.30 feed for a bit longer is a good idea - I wish I'd done this before I went back to work, I've never experienced such extreme exhaustion before, even when he was first born. Thanks for taking the time to reply, I'll update in a week or so after trying a dream feed with a smaller amount of milk each time and trying to get him to go longer in the morning.