What's Wrong With Me?

I have to admit that I am really struggling to remain sane most days, especially when my sleep the night before has been bad or minimal. I think I'm still struggling with depression. I had another doctor appointment on Friday, this time with someone who hadn't seen me before, and I was again told how surprised this doctor was that I lived through what happened to me and am recovering. I keep getting told that the few other HELLP patients the doctors have treated have all died. No one seems to know what to tell me now because they never made it this far with their patients. It makes me extremely depressed, though I suppose I should be thrilled to be the one who lived. It's just hard to wrap your head around it. The fact that you should have died from how bad things were. The fact that you're recovering but no one really knows how long the full recovery will take and whether there will be any lasting impacts. The fact that every doctor who looks at your deformed abdomen with your intestines swirling around and says, no--I've never seen anything like that before, and I'm not sure how to fix it. It makes me want to cry alot.

I'm glad my body was tough enough to carry twins for as long as it did and tough enough to survive one of the worst cases of HELLP syndrome ever, but I am pretty pissed and depressed that EVERYTHING about my childbearing experience has been "unnatural." I couldn't get pregnant on my own. I couldn't deliver vaginally. I couldn't breatsfeed because of my condition. I couldn't come home with my babies from the hospital and spend their first month of life with them. Everything about the whole damn experience has SUCKED. I feel like a complete failure for not being able to breastfeed. I feel like a bad mother for not being able to say, "but despite everything bad that happened, it was so worth it." This is not the most gratifying thing I have ever done. The babies are very, very difficult to handle. Am I absolutely horrible for saying that??? Sadly, it feels true right now. The birth of my babies was not the best day of my life, and it should have been. Getting pregnant should have been a joyous experience, and thanks to IF, it wasn't. My maternity leave should be a wonderful bonding time with my boys, and really it's just been about my survival.

I love the babies, but I feel so overwhelmed and helpless that sometimes I think they'd be better off without me. Horrible thoughts, I know. But the thoughts are there, and I have to deal. All of this is compounded of course by the fact that my boys are not "easy" babies like every other baby my friends seem to have. They cry a lot. They aren't hitting a lot of the milestones as quickly as their younger cousin, which is of course constantly pointed out to me. "Oh, she is already reacting to this and doing that; your boys aren't????" It was bad enough having my IF pregnancy compared to my sister's natural pregnancy; it's worse having my boys compared to her girl. "Oh, she hardly ever cries; oh, she drinks 8 ounces every bottle; oh...oh...oh."

I. Hate. It.

Help please, I'm drowning here. Please tell me it gets easier?