I’ve carried my own writing prompts in my brain (or on my phone) for years and this is actually similar to one of them. It’s something most people don’t understand, don’t know, or in my circumstance the sentence was “the things that nobody tells you when you start a family”.

I had loved babies since I was old enough to independently hold a baby on my own and as soon as I was able, at age 11, I started baby-sitting. There was just something about babies that appealed to me. I loved holding them, rocking them, feeding them and playing with them. My bedroom was adorned at one point by Anne Geddes pictures and I collected as many as I could.

So naturally, as soon as I got married I was ready to get pregnant and have a baby. It didn’t take long. Two years later, I was expecting again and then three years after that I had baby number three.

Those years when I look back were magical and sweet. Three beautiful babies that were the centre of my world and consumed all my time. I absolutely loved it. And things were fairly easy, despite all the chaos. Just like I always knew, I felt I truly was the “baby whisperer” and had few problems with these little humans. It just came second nature to me and I was rarely stressed.

I remember a conversation with a coworker around this time, her kids were a few stages past mine and in their teens at that point. We were comparing stories about our kids and she said “little kids, little problems…big kids, big problems”. I couldn’t be sure what she meant, it gave me pause. Little did I know that I would unfortunately find out the meaning years later and live through it.

So to put this in context of the prompt, what people don’t understand, until they’ve lived it, is that nobody tells you when you bring these babies into the world, all of the very serious issues you may deal with as the kids get older. If I had known would I have done things differently?

For me, babies and toddlers and even young kids were easy peasy. Lots of work but things were smooth sailing. Then my kids hit the teenage years. And throw into the mix their dad and I separated. If it sounds like I’m making this about myself, I’m truly not trying to, I’m just speaking of it from a parent’s perspective. The marriage ending was hard for sure but it was my decision to leave and it was my kids who mostly had to deal with the fallout from it.

These were things I was not prepared for when it came to being a mom: my kids dealing with anxiety, deaths of close friends and best friends and all the symptoms associated with depression. Which first you have to recognize AS symptoms of a mental health problem and not just teenaged moodiness, no motivation to do anything including get out of bed for school, etc.

I was not equipped for this. I wanted those simple little baby years back when the biggest obstacle was having to write out Valentine’s for three separate classes and make three separate snacks for the kids to take to school and share. I had witnessed depression before in my life, right from when I was a kid. My gramma had been plagued by it on and off for years and there were times all she could do was sit at the table and cry. And I would just sit with her. I didn’t understand it but I was happy to just be with her.

But to see my own kids going through this, it’s the scariest and most helpless feeling in the world and all throughout you have to still keep going to work and driving the other kids to hockey practise and shop for groceries and make supper every night. Nobody told me this was going to happen when I was in my early twenties blah blah blah’ing about how I couldn’t wait to get married and have kids! Why didn’t anybody tell me?

When your kids are experiencing these things, you as a parent are expected to fix it, to do something about it. And for anyone who has lived this, they will understand the resources for dealing with mental health issues, specifically in teenagers are few and far between. So you try doctors, you try mental health workers, counsellors, medication, you hire a personal trainer and get gym passes. And when none of it seems to work, then what? It’s absolutely terrifying.

But thankfully everybody lives through it, you somehow get through the ups and downs of this rollercoaster ride that is, the teenage years. And had I never lived it myself, as is the case with a lot of things in life, I would have never understood it. I would have never realized that bringing a baby into this world extends far beyond Barney and Sesame Street and backyard slip ‘n slides and birthday parties and sheer joy 24/7.