Babies and Heroin

The long-awaited follow-up to "Babies and Suicide."  My baby-less friend and I had an interesting conversation regarding the irrationality of loving ones baby.  We "justify" our love for our babies on multiple levels: genetic progression and molecular immortality; provision of personal meaning and purpose; communal growth and sustainment; societal expectations; and so-fucking-cute-ness.  But the reality is, it is inexplicable.  It is irrational, incomprehensible, and indeterminable.  In other words it simply exists.  It is what it is and I can't rationalize it.  

Having a baby is a drug.  It stimulates some neuron in some minimally used portion of our brain that causes us to act like rats and push the reward button incessantly and at whatever cost.  Babies are heroin.  Just like no one can rationalize the heroin experience or why one would sacrifice everything for it, I can't rationalize my love for my baby or why I would sacrifice everything for her.  You don't know until you try.  The first one's free.  (That's actually not true.  My financial advisor told me to plan on saving $300K for college in 2027.  Not a good marketing scheme for the baby pushers.)

Procreation, individual genetic progression, and social evolution seem about as basic as things come.  The cause, effect, and meaning seem clear.  But they are not.  Again, I don't know why I love my child, I just do.  I can come up with a million reasons that seem rational, but none are perfect.  I rely on the poets and playwrights to explain it adequately.  If the supposed base of our entire being - procreation - is inexplicable without obvious causes and effects except those that describe the entity but not make its being apparent (i.e. I can give you a million reasons why I love my child but none are absolutely true; each is a brushstroke on Van Gogh's Starry Night, but I want the whole picture!), what else that seems obviously explicable is just the opposite?