Waking up during the night and feeding

This is going to sound stupid but I have a lot of anxiety around feeding so here goes...

Baby ended up having a hospital visit the other weel - projectile vomited was bright yellow, off his milk (5 weeks old at the time) he was 4 weeks premature and was in NICU for a few reasons one being his blood sugars being too low and unstable because of all this we were worried, the out of hours GP was concerned about his tense stomach and called CAU at a larger hospital who said to go down... to be told I was overfeeding him and to only give him 70ml every 3hrs, not to feed him before 3hrs and to not offer a bottle first when he cries and that crying can be for many different reasons not just hunger which I do understand.
I had a chat with my health visitor team because he was just demolishing 70ml bottles and was wanting more, now my HV always said to feed on demand... anyway they were like "what a load of rubbish, theyve just picked over feeding out of thin air because theres no obvious cause, 1 projectile vomiting is ok more would be a concern the 3hr rule is rubbish etc." Anyway we agreed to up his bottles.
Back to my point/question. He is 7 weeks old now, at what point during his night time wake ups am I supposed to know if hes hungry or just fussing?? Because the other night he ended up going 6hrs from his last bottle and that involved me soothing him and giving his dummy back what felt like every 15mins until he eventually started crying and I decided 6hrs was too long for him and he downed his bottle. And again last night I managed to grt him to wait until 3.5hrs but it means he has had 3 bottles before 12pm and if he keeps up hes going to have more milk today than he should be for his weight and I just feel confused should I be trying to avoid giving him a bottle during the night or not??
Even the cow and gate guidelines say for 120ml to give 6 times a day but then he doesnt "always" finish them sometimes he will take 90ml, 100ml, 110ml.... so i guess it evens out?

I dont need comments about how you cant over feed a baby, i need gentle advice i feel so anxious and upset about everything related to my baby right now

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I would say if you try to comfort him in other ways, rocking, dummy, change his nappy, make sure he’s comfortable etc and he still doesn’t settle that could be a sign he’s hungry and needs a bottle. Also if you kiss near his mouth and he’s extending to open his mouth (and not for his dummy) that could be a sign.

Babies at that age have very small stomachs and it can be common for them to feed regularly.
Potentially just keep track of how much he’s having at each feed and ensure it evens out or that he doesn’t massively go over the recommended intake on one single feed so his tummy isn’t too full.
I can see how this could be so stressful, as hard as it is try not to worry too much and go off of your own instincts. If it also happened once only, they could be wrong about the over feeding, it could have been a number of other things

It is actually possible to overfeed them if they’re bottle fed. Generally speaking if my LO(3 months) gets fussy middle of night I will try other solutions like changing diaper, offering binky, etc before jumping to another feed. If she’s still really upset after 10-15 minutes of binky I’ll then see if she’s hungry. To also help prevent the overfed spit ups you could try burping him after every ounce. Wait and see afterwards if he’s still angry about not having his bottle or if he is full and content. Mine will also start to pull away from the bottle, spit out milk, when she needs to burp or is done. Sometime I will also offer a binky instead of more bottle if she’s still angry and that’ll work if she’s just looking for something to comfort suck. You could also look into getting bottles that’re anti gas or using a slower nipple flow. If he’s taking formula you could try switching brands.

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