There’s been some kind of virus floating through our house for the past week or so. And as I predicted it would, the illness is slowly making its rounds through the family.

Last night we got hit with a “double whammy”. As my husband and I were tucking our sweet China babies into bed we realized that both of them felt warm, and sure enough taking their temperatures confirmed our suspicions: The two littlest members of our family were sick.

I don’t know what sick kids means in anyone else’s home, but it ours it means an extra kiddo or two in Mom and Dad’s bed. So last night we had our littles in bed with us…one on either side of me, with their 100+ degree fevers making me feel like I was sleeping in a furnace! I wanted SO badly to turn on the A/C…even though the temperature outside our house was in the 50’s. But despite my own hot flashes, the contorted shape my body was twisted into by the child on either side of me, and the overall fact that I was just so uncomfortable that I couldn’t sleep, a beautiful thought occurred to me.

I was there to take care of my babies.

Both of my little ones had surgeries in China that I wasn’t there for. Both of them had illnesses…either at the orphanage or in the ICU…before I became their Mama and was able to take care of them. The privilege of caring for these two once orphans in their current sickness was not lost on me. Because once upon a time, they didn’t have a Mama to take care of them when they didn’t feel well. They didn’t have parents to snuggle in bed with when they were sick. And once upon a time, we didn’t have them.

Every excruciating day of the wait. Every typo and delay that sent me into a frenzy during the paper chase. They had led up to that moment. The moment when I snuggled down with my two babies and was thankful to be up all night taking care of them when they were sick. So many times during the wait to hold my babies in my arms, I lost sleep over a bit of bad news. But the lost sleep that comes from snuggles during sickness…it’s oh so sweet.