Oooh, Cherry Pie!

“Mmm… cherry pie,” I’d groaned wistfully.  I didn’t even realize what I was saying until after I’d blurted it out.  But I couldn’t help it, I was hungry! 

I hadn’t had anything to eat since midnight the night before, and that had only been a light snack.  But there I was in the hospital and in labor 14 hours later, and I found that I was famished.  They wouldn’t let me eat!  Not even a little snack.  Of course I understood why, but I still thought that was pretty mean.  Forbidding a pregnant woman to eat is like forbidding a bird to fly; it's just cruel.

So it should’ve come as no surprise that I started daydreaming about different types of food.  Only I didn’t want to just eat food.  Oh, no.  I wanted to bathe in it.  I wanted to shovel food into my mouth and roll around in it at the same time!  I wanted to eat and eat and forget about what was going on around me.  I wanted the pain to stop, and my brain was latching on to the one thing that I used to drown my sorrows in: Food.

And then, just out of the blue, I suddenly had the strongest desire for cherry pie.  Cherry pie!  Talk about random.  I mean, never in my life have I ever actually craved cherry pie.  I’ve never even liked it all that much.  That is, until I lay helpless on the delivery table—trapped by the catheter in my back and the excruciating pains vibrating throughout my body.  (Blasted epidural.  Stupid thing didn’t even work!)

I’m pretty sure I surprised my sisters and JT when I started groaning, “cherry pie… oooh, with ice cream…” and proceeding to list off all the delightful foods I would’ve paid big bucks to slather all over my big, swollen body at that very moment.  Up to that point I had been shaking uncontrollably while keeping a death-grip on the plastic handle of the hospital bed, clinging to it as though it was my life-line.  But when I started thinking of all the foods I wanted to eat and listing them off one by one it made me smile, even through all the crazy pain.

I had found my happy place.

I think we all had a pretty good laugh about it then.  And at one point, when the nurse had left the room, JT whipped out a small bag of fruit snacks and gave them to me.  If I remember correctly, I squealed with delight and promptly devoured that bag of contraband like I was inhaling oxygen for the first time ever.  And when the nurse returned and commented that “it smells good in here, like fruit!” we were all trying to conceal our smiles and feign innocence.  As if we’d broken the law or something. 

Ahhh… good times.  Yes, I was in a room full of nerds.

When I got home from the hospital three days later I was thrilled to find two cherry pies waiting for me in the kitchen.  Next to them was a small note written in a messy scrawl: Carrie, I hope you enjoy your cherry pies. D & kids.

I’ve got the best friends and family.