The costs are finite. The benefits... infinite.

One of my favourite things that a parent said to me just before I became a parent was something like this, from my friend Travis:

‘All the costs of parenting are finite. All the benefits are infinite.’

I’ve found myself thinking of that more and more over the last six months or so.

Money.

Time.

Sleep.

Energy.

Finite, countable costs.

Love.

The feeling of holding them, their heart to your heart.

When you stare into their eyes for the first time and realise that something with its own unique soul is looking back at you.

When you sit, as I did, last week, throwing away various bits of paper covered in the drawing and writing a five-year-old does by herself in the morning before she leaves her room. All these little pictures and words. All of which will be forgotten, even by me. But each of which is a part of the infinite spiral of consciousness that is a human being. Inside her, forever… Infinite, creating before my eyes. Being held in my hands. Impossible to comprehend.

Infinite.

Since we started telling people we were having a third child, it has been interesting to see the reactions. They broadly fall into two groups.

First, the reaction you would expect. The polite reaction, and the natural one for many. ‘Congratulations!’ ‘Oh, that’s such great news.’ Big, warm smiles.

And second, the reaction I didn’t expect, especially not as such a large subset of the reactions. Shock and apprehension: anything from a jokey ‘you’re brave’ or ‘you’ll be outnumbered’ to panic behind the eyes. I’m in England, so everyone recovers to ‘congratulations’, but it is fascinating to see.

And to my memory, I had none of those answers when we were having our first or second child. This is a third child thing.

Some of it - I imagine - comes from people’s experience. Their sense of how hard it is to hold together a family of four, let alone imagine five, alongside work, aging family, relationship struggles and more. Some may come from knowing how hard we as a family have found it to do all those things.

My wife and I have (fairly) actively refused for the finite to be our reason for not having another child.

As one of my friends said on hearing the news, ‘it feels like you are advocating for life’.

The struggles are real: maternity leave, mortgages, business struggles, logistical challenges.

And yet… all of that pales into insignificance when compared with the moment that I’ll look into a third set of eyes and see a third soul looking back at me, undoubtedly different to the other two.

All of it pales into insignificance compared to seeing an infuriating child gallivanting around the kitchen with a strange look in her eyes, making us laugh even when we want to tell her off… and imagining there being another, like this, only completely, infinitely unique.

All of it pales into insignificance with the sense of the whole universe coming together in one moment, past and future meeting, as a new living being takes its first breaths.

And who knows where it will go.

The costs are finite. The benefits, infinite.

And this isn’t only true of children.

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PS My latest book is The Power to Choose: Finding Calm and Connection in a Complex World, is out now. Get your copy here: https://geni.us/powertochoose

This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online.