Exponential chaos

There’s nothing like adding a baby to make one wonder what on earth seemed so hard about life before another extremely needy human being was thrown into the mix.*

In my humble experience,** household chaos, or at least the potential thereof, increases exponentially rather than arithmetically with the birth of each child. (It seems to me that this is often particularly true with the birth of the second child.) Long ago, I hopefully postulated a more reasonable hypothesis, but experience has not borne it out. So the equation for potential household chaos upon adding a baby isn’t simply n+1 (where n=number of havocwreakers already in the household). Help me out, people—what’s the equation I’m looking for? (Those of you with multiples can tell us how it needs to be adjusted for that situation.)

I’m thinking about this because if I can describe the situation in a neat equation, then at least one thing around here will be neat . :P

*Counterpoint: there’s nothing like adding a baby to make one marvel at the wonders God works in each family member’s heart through that newest soul.

**I'm at a particularly crazy point right now. Check back later and I may think that there's an inverse exponential effect. Or at least a plateau at some point. Or something.