You experience a decade of being the absolute rock for your child. They rely on you for food, shelter, nappy changing, cleanliness, getting where they need to go, when they need to go there. You play with them, dry their tears when they fall, patch them up and help them get back on track. You get completely used to thinking for them as well as you. Your diary is full of their activities (not so much your own). Life, if you also have a paid job, becomes an endless round of time management genius. From meetings, to school pickups... on and on it goes. It's thrilling, but exhausting.
During this time you occasionally wish they didn't need you so much. Their call of 'muuummmm', starts to become more grating and less cute. They seem to lose things constantly, and require your input so much that you rarely get to drink a cup of tea whilst it's hot, nor go to the toilet uninterrupted.