12. The Soft Serve Incident

In the middle of the heatwave, something of a milestone. Sheltering in the air-conditioning of Malaysian restaurant Sudu, we actually ordered lunch for our 10-month old. Not from the children’s menu – but from the main menu’s sides he had a fried egg and a plain roti, and seemed to really enjoy it. This was a moment, a small step towards that idealised picture of family life where we get to eat where we like, and he enthusiastically joins in without too much anti-social behaviour. Let’s skip over the napkin underneath his chair and the fistful of wet wipes required to stop his lunch destroying the place.

The next landmark was graduating from lunch with him to dinner. This started off really well before very rapidly spiralling into hell.

On a properly hot evening we were all excited to be in a restaurant IN THE EVENING. It was 5pm, but still, this was our first dinner out on home soil. Him waking from sleep to join us eating chips in a village square in Spain at 10.30pm was fun, but doesn’t count as a step back towards something like our pre-child lifestyle. This, though… 

It felt exciting to be out as a family on a beautiful warm evening. Even more so to be offered aperitifs and martinis. The place filled up quickly, and even though we were placed in the restaurant’s nappy valley at the back by the kitchen, it was a vibe. We clinked glasses. He happily tore the paper tablecloth to shreds. No one minded. Snacks included bread – big tick. Mains were pizza – with delightfully chewy crusts he loved.

While he eats most things, his age means we’re still limiting salt, and as we gradually start to increase the frequency of our restaurant trips, we’re trying to ensure there’s something amongst what we’re ordering that we’ll be able to share with him. Bread is a solid option which usually can distract him through most of a meal.

It was all going so well. And then we were offered dessert. Soft serve – vanilla with cherries or coffee. How about getting the coffee with the cherries I asked? We got one serving of each. Now although we’re keen for him to try as many foods as possible, we are heavily restricting sugar in any form other than fruit. One of the big objectives for this early eating of actual food is to learn about appetite, and fullness, and when to stop eating. There’s good evidence that sugar – in free form rather than as part of the fibre of fruit – can really confuse this as the relationship between the calories you’re consuming and the quantity of food is massively different than when eating pasta, or cucumber, or lentils or pretty much anything else.

We shouldn’t have ordered dessert. But we were all excited to be in a restaurant. He was happy, we were giddy with cocktails and the sense of our old social life coming back, and so the offer of the soft serve special got a quick yes. Then we compounded the initial mistake. 

When it arrived, we gave him a taste, a mere tiny smear, of the vanilla. Cold, creamy, sweet, delicious. His face pretty much expressed all the same pleasure we were feeling. He wanted more. We didn’t give him more. Understandably he was not happy. We plainly have enough to give to him. It’s not like he threw it on the ground even once, let alone repeatedly – the usual reason why something edible is taken away from him. Usually when we’re eating something he can’t have, we have a decoy. Something good he can eat that distracts him from what we’re having. Bread does lots of the heavy lifting here. But this time we have nothing. The table is empty apart from half a glass of beer, and two coupes of soft serve. Not even much of the tablecloth is left for him to rip.

The mood darkened. Betrayal and confusion written all over his face. The noise level escalated in the now very full and very buzzy restaurant. I should have taken him out of the situation immediately. But there was a coupe of glistening coffee soft serve right there which really would be – for me – the perfect end to this fun first family dinner out. So I didn’t leave immediately. I wolfed down the soft serve. So fast I got brain freeze. 

His unhappiness was escalating – anger and confusion at why he wasn’t being given more. My speed eating must have seemed like it was taunting him. The coupe empty I quickly stood up and took him out, leaving my partner to finish her soft serve and drink. Once we’re out on the street, away from the sight of the forbidden fruit and the scene of my brutal and insensitive denial, calm was restored and we had a happy few minutes waving at all the people sitting in the open window enjoying their evenings.

Parenting a newborn is to experience your world completely change, becoming something centred mostly, and sometimes exclusively on the child. Your bedroom gets rearranged around their sleeping. The house gets adapted to accommodate toys, and prams, and furniture for them. You lose most of your control on when you wake up, when you have to get out of bed, and consequently when you must go to bed in order to be ready for the early starts. You filter social functions against whether you can take him, or use valuable but scarce babysitting resources to go. If you go, your arrival and departure are based on his demeanour and your anticipation of his hunger and mood.

And in making these adaptations sometimes you make mistakes. The party where you stayed too long because you were having fun and you didn’t calculate that his good mood was now on borrowed time. The meal you serve much too late for his appetite and need for sleep. Accepting the invitation to a friend’s place that will tip your child from happily adaptable to completely disrupted.

I count three big blessings.

The first is that my hobby is cooking and eating – this serves the family, and facilitates much of our social life. If my hobby was surfing, taking me away from the home for long periods, that would be a big conflict. But my hobby mostly takes place in and around the home, to everyone’s benefit. I’m adjusting what’s an appropriate amount of time to invest in it, but at the moment it has survived mostly intact.

The second is we have a pretty adaptable kid, whose curiosity and sociability often trumps their tiredness and keeps them interested and happy when we’re eating. It’s not limitless and we’re trying to get better at anticipating when we need to save him from himself (and us) and take him out of social situations.

The third is a wonderful partner who is as invested in eating as I am, and who is an excellent parent to be doing this with. We make mistakes individually and collectively without judgement, and mostly laugh our way through it.

We’ve learnt our lesson. Never big dessert eaters, we’re now on a very strict ban of eating sweet stuff in front of him, other than fruit, which we’re happy to share. We’re not getting back to exactly the same lifestyle we had pre-baby anytime soon, but we chose this new path. I have a growing list of restaurants I’d quite like to check out, but which aren’t baby friendly. I’m honestly not that bothered. If they’re good they’ll still be there in a few years. For now the thrill of finding places we can take him, with food we can order for him, is more than enough compensation.