u/FoxWhole2600

I am a second time mom and my son is just 15 days old. He was born at 37+3, generally health. He developed bad jaundice shortly after birth and we had to supplement heavily with formula in the first week. It didn't help at all that my milk took 5 days to come in and I am still not producing enough. This same thing happened 5 years ago with my daughter who was born even more prematurely at 35+6. We fought hard for breastfeeding and after about 1.5 months of absolute hell were finally able to do exclusive breastfeeding. We were tripple feeding, doing weighted feeds at home, worked through a tongue tie, sleepiness, etc. so both me and my husband were severely sleep deprived and I barely was able to take care of myself but it was covid time and we had no one else to take care of and, again, it all worked out eventually. I fed ny daughter for 2 years!

Now, fast forward to today, I have all the same issues. Not enough milk, baby is sleepy at breasts, doesn't get full feeds from breasts and we have to supplement. I barely make ends meet with my pumped milk and with what he wants. He gains beautifully, but otherwise I am completely exhausted from tripple feeding and not seeing an end to this. We met with an LC and they were pretty useless telling us to just continue the every 2.5 hours feeds with pumping. I can not imagine doing this for weeks longer.

So, what do I do? AI keeps encouraging me saying I already produce like 600ml of milk daily but who cares if I can not sleep and baby is hungry if we don't give him a bottle after nursing. I am considering doing a nesting day tomorrow pretty much allowing my baby to feed frequently and however he wants without supplementing. Would this hurt my supply? Idk. Am I willing to go longer with tripple feeds? Again, idk. I am starting to lose sight of why am I doing this. Of we just use formula everyone's life is going to be easier. I will probably feel worthless as a mom though but I will get over it, right?

Any advice is welcome and thank you

I am 26.3 weeks pregnant with my 6th pregnancy and 1 child at home. I had it all: mmc at 9 weeks, pprom at 21, emergency cerclage at 16 and this is what got me my daughter at 35.6 and she is 5 now, then tfmr due to trisomy 18 at 13 weeks and lastly another miscarriage at 14 weeks due to ic literally an hour before I was scheduled to get my preventative cerclage. I am already so heartbroken and have thought I was done with pregnancies. Then this miracle pregnancy comes out of nowhere, we didn't plan it at all and we're cautious but.. here we are. I got my cerclage at 10 weeks now, has had a ton of discomfort throughout this pregnancy and very little hope but we somehow managed to get to 26 weeks which brings me to today.

I felt some cramps in the morning, waited a few hours for them to resolve to no luck and went in to L&D to get checked. They caught some contractions, not very structured, but still. On initial exam I was closed and stitch not on tension, then a few hours later they said it is now allowing 1 finger in but the stitch is seemingly still fine. I'm waiting for a repeat exam in a few hours again. I'm so stressed. I knew it was a possibility at any stage of the pregnancy but now facing it is so freaking scary. I scanned through the r/nicuparents and there's a lot of great stories of 26 weekers but the road is not easy, and there are many possibilities along the way, not only positive ones..

Idk what am I expecting from ranting here, I guess some encouragement or just support. God please help

UPD: contractions stopped, there was some more pain overnight which resolved after taking Tylenol, cervix is seemingly stable, so they sent me home after ~23 hours in L&D. They think I'm not in labor and asked me NOT to do bed rest and also suggested anxiety meds (this is kinda appalling honestly, what did they expect from me, not reacting to 6/10 pain and contractions?? Idk, they seemed to mean weel but the message still didn't sit with me). Idk how much longer I'm going to stay pregnant, it's been such a rollercoaster, some days I'm starting to believe we can get far, like maybe 35-36 weeks even like with my daughter, and some days I'm ready to throw the towel

I have IC and had losses in the past due to it and now 24 weeks pregnant with preventative cerclage placed at 10 weeks. I was very cautious so far with a lot of laying on the couch, no active movements, no lifting things, etc. but I feel like I have become very weak and lost all muscles and now kinda like a jello with no structure (I'm not overweight just really feel like there's no muscles left in my body). I'm thinking of maybe starting some very light exercise, my doctor said definitive yes to it, but I'm scared. I see a lot of videos online with various stretching exercises and I immediately think like "this is going to induce labor for me". Have you done any exercises in pregnancy with cerclage? What exactly? Where to find 100% safe ones? Any other advice is welcome.