At what point does a couple decide it is time to have a second or third or in my case, sixth baby? Adding to our families is a personal decision and there is not a magic formula where we plug in the numbers and it lets us know if we are ready or not. Many of us want more than one child, but after spending a year or two with our first child, we begin to reconsider what our final kid tally should be. There are many obvious reasons for this. It is hard work parenting. It can be expensive raising children. One reason that you may not expect though, is the concern that we will not have enough love to go around.

We love our first child immensely. We devote so much into parenting this child. If we add another child to the equation, it only makes sense that the love, time and energy gets divided. Right? Now add a third or fourth child, and their down to only 33% or 25% of our time and energy. This does not seem fair to the first child who use to have 100% of our time, attention and energy. Following me?

If we follow this line of thinking, we are thinking in finite terms. If we think in finite terms, then yes, our love and energy and attention will finally be used up and each family member will be allocated a certain percentage.

But, the love we have for our children is not finite.It is a ever-evolving and dynamic force in our life.

An example that was used by Stephen Covey in his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families, I think best illustrates this concept. He was speaking of communication with and disciplining our children, but I think it fits in this case also. He compares our emotional well-being to a well. This well is very deep but does eventually end. If we keep drawing water from the well, it will run dry. Our love for our children is also a well. Many challenges we face while parenting draws water from our wells. But there are all the joys that go with parenting that deposit water back into our wells. Adding more children to our lives does take more energy, time and love, but this compares lightly with how much love is deposited back into the well.

Some of you are reading this and probably thinking that your well is pretty darn close to drying up. I hope some of you reading this feel this way, because there has been or will be a time that we all feel this way! We cannot rely solely on others to fill up our "wells". Find something you are passionate about, something you enjoy, this too will deposit water into the well. We as parents, especially, feel guilty spending time doing something just for ourselves when we already feel as though we are being spread too thin. But as you can see, if that is what it takes to add to the well, then everyone will benefit.

There are many factors that go into our decision about how many children we will have and not all of them are under our control. For those of you who may be considering right now whether or not to add to your family, do what feels right in your heart, but never worry that you will run out of love.

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