That said, I had a startling realization around 5:00 this morning. Poor Charlie is now trudging through L's stomach bug of Tuesday (so much for that iron stomach I touted). Since his bout struck right at bedtime, we settled him on an air mattress in our room, unsure of how often he would be sick or his ability to handle it in his sleep, not to mention that his bedroom is carpeted and ours isn't.
Throughout the night my poor boy was up every 45 minutes to two hours...and when I say "up", I mean getting sick, a few times I'm pretty sure he was actually still mostly asleep and just rolling over to his bowl. Having him in our room made it very easy to hear, help, comfort and clean him, but as any mom knows, waking up five times in the night to vomit is not pleasant.
What I realized in the wee hours this morning though was that I truly didn't mind. I hate that my boy is sick and miserable and going to miss a couple of playdates, but jumping out of bed, holding his head, wiping his brow and cleaning his bowl were exactly what I wanted to be doing.
The thing is, if I'm honest with myself, I wouldn't have felt the same way if L's illness had struck in the night. I don't know if it's because I've only known him a few weeks, because I didn't carry him in my belly, because he doesn't share my DNA or what...but I honestly believe that for anyone other than Charlie I would have resented every bit of last night. I would be frustrated and grumpy and playing up my tiredness and the intermittent "sympathetic" nausea I felt.
I didn't think it would be that way. My childhood love of orphan novels and my pride led me to believe that opening our home to foster children would turn me into an altruistic angel of some sort, but I'm not. For now at least, I am still Charlie's mom trying to help other people's kids... I do wonder (hope? fear?) if that will change, though.
Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.
(Colossians 3:23)
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