Especially if you want to backup said RAW files.

Keep a copy of the catalogue backup.

Hrm.  Never did that before.

How does that work if you dont mind me asking.

This should guide you:
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/back-catalog.html

Normally, you do not keep the adjustments with the picture as the adjustments are stored in the catalog (SQLite database).

You can set Lightroom to write XML sidecar files that contain MOST of the edit information for each image.

For the exported JPG files, you can have MOST of the edit info written to the EXIF data.

By backup do you mean move the raw files to an external drive?

All the information on the edits is stored in Lightroom, specifically the catalog. The .cr2 files aren't actually changed in any way. You can move them to an external drive and as long as you point Lightroom to the updated location (it will ask you for the location of the missing photos when you open it next time) the edits will remain. There's not really any neat and tidy way to store the edits with the raw, because even if you do write some of the changes there you still need a program to read the info, so in that case you might as well just keep it in the Lightroom catalog.

Not the raw files, just the changes i made. I have a fear of losing all the edits i made and starting from scratch.

In that case just upload the catalog backups from the ~Lightroom>Backups folder to Google Drive, Dropbox, MS OneDrive, whatever.

you could always export DNGs