Darwin Meets Ice-Cream

"Without ice cream, there would be darkness and chaos."

Don Kardong

This is a video of Baby Darwin eating ice-cream at day 203 of life - almost 7 months old.



He had ice-cream before this and knows it blew the taste of everything else we have fed him out of the water. In fact, after his first taste, he freaked out when we wouldn't give him more, something he had never done before. That revealed the dark side of the frozen confectionery to us unsuspecting new parents - it's like crack cocaine for children.

In the video, you can see Darwin keeping his mouth wide open in anticipation of the sweet treat like an overgrown featherless nestling (something I wish he would do for the baby mush we usually feed him), his hands waving about in grabbing readiness. When I finally gave the spoonful to him, you can see him little face frowning from the unexpected brain freeze. Cue laughter from his parents at his expense, because we need to stay sane from raising him somehow.

Brain freeze of ice-cream headaches occur when cold food touches one's roof of mouth (or palate). It causes the capillaries in the area to quickly constrict and dilate again, stimulating the pain receptors nearby which relay the information to the brain via branches of the maxillary nerve, itself a branch of the trigeminal nerve which is responsible for the sensations of our faces (amongst other things). The "headache" or the sensation of your noggin freezing painfully up is actually a referred pain due to most of the head and your palate sharing the same sensory (trigeminal) pathway.



Ice-cream dealer,
k0k s3n w4i