Bottle Fed/Weaning INSATIABLE!

[Shanx19]

Apologies if this is not the correct place!

Hello everyone

My little boy will be 19 weeks on sunday and weighs around 18lb.

He has an insatiable appetite! At the moment he eats (around these times)

8am 7oz
12pm 7oz
4pm 7oz
8pm 7oz

and then wakes in the night between 3am and 4am for another 7oz.

He absolutely drains his 7oz bottles.

Our doctor told us to introduce a bit of baby rice or porridge to his diet once a day which we have been doing at his 4pm feed. He has 4 spoonfuls of porridge made up with milk from his bottle which he also easily devours.
He tried carrot yesterday and wolfed all that too.

The problem is, he is now struggling to go 4 hours between bottles. I can just about get him to 3.5 hours but by the time he eats he's really upset.
He has never slept through and has only recently started sleeping from 2130 to around 0400. More often than not he will wake between then too.

I dont know what to do. Do i give him 7oz every 3.5 hrs and hope he sleeps longer so he don't need a 6th bottle? Do i give him 42oz milk a day?
Do i introduce another solid feed? He is on Aptamil 1.

He also only sleeps about 11 hours in any 24 hour period.

All advice very welcome!!

Shanx He's always had lots of poos and explosive ones at that, so this milk just reduced the number to 1-2 a day instead of 4-5! If you're worried stick with first milk for now, but you can always give cooled boiled water if LO gets a little constipated.

Thank you.

Seems the entire family think I should wean him fully but I dont want to yet!

Yesterday he had 8oz (easily) at

0915
1200
1520
1800
2115
0130
0630

I know I shouldn't get too fixated on numbers but should I be feeding him 8oz at 0130? How do you encourage them to drop a bottle?
My mother in law suggested making an 8oz bottle with only 3 scoops of formula but that doesn't sound safe to me!
I can't kid him by stopping the bottle earlier-he knows. He waoits for thast last mouthful thgasts half air.
I've tried offering smaller bottles in the past. If it does work, he wakes again after say an hour.

Tbh, I don't mind nightfeeds but the volume of milk worries me a little bit. Only because when he was around 9 weeks he was already having 35oz and really struggling with all the lactose.
We changed his milk from Sma to aptamil which helped and tbh hes been fine since. It was just awful seeing him in so much pain and wouldnt want it to happen again.

Ignore your mother in law.

Let him have milk when he wants and he'll be fine.

Is he on medication for reflux? Or has anyone suggested cows milk protein intolerance? My DS used to drink 8 7oz bottles at that age until he was put on ranitidine and it dropped right down, I think he was comfort eating to sooth his reflux.

Just wanted to give you an anecdote. My ds guzzled like this after having his tongue tie 'fixed'. Could your ds be trying to catch up? Mine jumped from barely on the centile graph to just over 50th.

I demand feed and waited until just over 6 months to wean. He is still a contented chunky monkey (in all ways except waiting for a feed) despite most solids ending up on the floor.