Things are getting desperate around here. Like, really.

I can’t remember the last time I slept more than two or three hours at a stretch. I had hoped that my brief trip to Chicago would provide a full night’s sleep, but, alas, I spent that night waking up every hour wondering why I wasn’t being woken up every hour. Which, you know: FRUSTRATING.

The source of the problem is this: wakeful little Jasper and his grabby little hands. The boy has been in some kind of continuous developmental spurt/growth spurt/teething bender/WHATEVER since early September and the only thing that calms him down when he wakes – as he inevitably does, every night – is a fistful of my hair, preferably clutched while his little body – conveniently relocated to the master bed – is wrapped tightly around my head. Removal of legs or arms or fists results in high pitched wailing.

Like this, only with my head, and much less charming.

It is not conducive to sleep.

We have tried letting him cry it out. We have tried letting him fall asleep in his preferred, mom-clutching position and then relocating him back to his own bed. We have tried relocating me to another bed. Nothing works. If we leave him to cry it out, he screams with an escalating fury until he works himself into a frothing panic, which then requires an even more intense session of hair-grabbing to calm him down. If we remove him from our bed after he falls back asleep, he wakes and protests. If we remove me from the bed, he wakes and protests. If we move me even a few feet out of his reach, he wakes and protests. If we do anything other than send me off to another city to sleep in a hotel, he wakes and protests, and even then, he still wakes and protests.

It’s all become a bit much. The last few weeks, I tolerated – even took comfort in – his neediness and my own wakefulness, because he was sick, and I was worried – so, so worried – but his breathing has improved and his lungs seem stronger and so there’s a little less anxiety available to fuel my will to lay awake beside him all night.

I am tired, so tired.

I am tired, and my hair is breaking at the ends, and I am reaching the point where little hands – any hands – reaching toward me fills me with cold dread and that just breaks my heart. I think. I am so tired that my heart could have been plucked by crows from my insensible, zombified person some weeks ago and I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t have noticed.

Need help. BAD.