TMTM, oh darlin I am so sorry you are going through this! My heart goes out to you. And my prayers are with you.

One thing you might like to think about getting someone else to do for you is to sew up some love hearts for your baby in case he comes early and needs to stay in hospt for a while. My DS was in hospt for his first four months. One thing that gave us both comfort was love hearts that my sis had sewn. The idea is that you always have one in your bra, one or two in the wash and one in with bub. You wear them in your bra so that your smell and your milks smell is on them, then you give that one to your bub so that your smell is ALWAYS with him.

With our son we used them like pillows for him as he had to be intubated and had lots of IV's etc so there were always lines and wires that needed to be padded so that his skin was protected. Ours were about 10x10cm, made of flanelette sheets mainly and padded with old wollen jumpers or cotton wadding. I didnt want anything polyester near his skin.

Anyway, just a thought. You might have some friends or people from your parish who sew and are keen to help you out. But if that desnt happen the same thing would work with new hankies. We still have our DS's hearts from hospt and have used them many times with further hospital stays.

I have been around lots of premie babies in hospt and while its obviously better they go full term, being as far along as you are is (relatively speaking) pretty good. We werent even considered prem at all as my DS was born at 36 weeks - he was small and sick for other reasons.

I know you are worried about BF. My best advice would be to make your intentions very clear about BF, insist on Kangaroo Care - skin on skin in the unit where he is and if that is not supported by the carers find a Dr who will support it and get him/her to write it up in his care plan as a therapy. It will help him grow, help stabilize his temp and breathing and he will know your smell.

Rest up well!

Rachel