Fashion blogger Lizzy van der Ligt: ‘I used to have nothing to do with babies’
Image: Mark Groeneveld
Fashion designer and blogger Lizzy van der Ligt notices that motherhood has changed her. She is softer, less selfish and happier with simple things than before. But… she can still party hard and have a good time.
“I think it’s a bit scary how fast this is going,” says Lizzy van der Ligt, startled when I congratulate her on her almost one-year-old daughter. “Certainly because this was not even a ‘fun’ year because of corona. Nothing was possible and yet it flew by.” She quickly adds: “It also means that I am another year older myself – that’s extra scary.”
young mothers
It’s just what you call old of course. Thirty-year-old Lizzy is an average, perhaps even relatively young mother by Amsterdam standards, she explains, while many of her former dance academy friends from Brabant had children much earlier.
Lizzy used to dream of becoming a mother at a young age, she says… but not necessarily because she liked children so much. “I didn’t like them much, least of all babies. Of course I love Jagger and the children of friends and family, but I still don’t feel the need to hold someone else’s baby.”
“I have a strong bond with the women in my life, I call my grandmother every day”
The ‘young’ motherhood actually appealed to her mainly because she herself has a young mother and grandmother. “My mother was 27 when she had me, my grandmother a lot younger when my mother was born. People often thought that my grandmother was my mother. Even my great-grandmother still babysat us every week! Because of this, I have a strong bond with the women in my life. And I wish Jagger that too, it’s fantastic to see her with my mother and grandmother – hopefully we can enjoy this for years to come. My grandmother, now 75, is the first person I call when I walk the dog in the morning. Then we chat about what errands I am going to do, when she will come over again and my work, that fascinates her too.”
Dream big
Dancing, that was Lizzy’s first dream. After the dance academy she mainly wanted to be creative, preferably with fashion. With that ambition she left for an internship in Paris where she started blogging out of sheer boredom. “I didn’t know anyone, nobody knew me, I started blogging about nice shops, boutiques, brands. That’s how it grew.” And by ‘it’, Lizzy means her career as a fashion blogger, stylist, fashion influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers, and owner of fashion label Le Café Noir.
“My ambitions were huge: I wanted to conquer the world and set up an office in New York. Dream big, was my motto.” Lizzy can’t help but say that motherhood has adjusted those ambitions. “I still have them, sure, but to be honest: they are less important to me. As long as everyone is healthy and happy, I’m already completely happy.
I used to think it was much easier: a child can just move in, woohoo, let’s go!” But now living in New York is officially off the table. “I will stay in the Netherlands, I would never take my child away from her grandmother. Family is very important to me. My friend (Yuki – Kris Kross – Kempees, ed.) regularly says: ‘It looks like I’m married to an Italian, I’m getting your whole family there!’ I would be terribly sad if my parents couldn’t develop a close relationship with my child. I couldn’t predict that feeling in advance.”
own thing
You can only really say something meaningful about some things if you experience it, Lizzy now understands better. “I used to think: how can you be happy if you’re sitting at home with a child all day? Now I’d rather sit at home with my child than sit on a throne all day fabulous sitting among all the people who like to talk about themselves. That said, my work may not be the most important thing in my life, but I still want to have a career. Sitting at home every day would certainly not make me a nicer mother. I really need my own thing.” And you can, she says. It’s a matter of good regulation.
“I used to think: how can you be happy when you’re at home with a child?”
“Monday is my holy mother’s day, nothing or no one gets in the way. Not fast-fast, not even flying into my mother, just not, done. The babysitter is there two days a week and Yuki has a regular Father’s Day. That is completely different from when I was growing up: my mother raised me, my brother and sister, my father was abroad six months a year for his work and was therefore mainly there for ‘the fun things’. That is a big difference with our situation: Yuki and I really do it together.”
In love
Lizzy and Yuki have been together since 2015. Right from the first meeting, Lizzy knew he had to become the father of her child. A feeling she’d never had with previous boyfriends. But that wasn’t the only thing that was different about this love. Lizzy, for example, fished Yuki in with her own hands by sending him a message via Facebook. Laughing: “That was really not for me, I had never done anything like this before, so it shocked me, but apparently I really wanted it.” A good move, because it clicked. “I had never been so in love,” Lizzy says about this.
So when she learned after two weeks of dating that “a girl” was moving in with Yuki temporarily, because she had no place to stay at the time, Lizzy was more than clear. “I said, ‘You come here with your things now or I never have to see you again.’ Of course I didn’t really expect him to come, hello, we were just dating, but sure enough, the bell rang. There he stood with his bag on the doorstep of the house where I lived with my niece. Suddenly we had a stranger in the house! A stranger who never left. Yuki, me and Jagger still live here.”
Miscarriage
Lizzy might have wanted to be a young mother, but if it had been up to Yuki, it would have happened sooner. “Yuki is fond of children and a kind of magnet: they always attract him. He is a nice, patient father.” The year Lizzy turned 27, they decided to go for it. It worked, Lizzy got pregnant, but after nine weeks the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.
“Fun is different”, Lizzy now says soberly. “Funnily enough, at one point I had more to do with my father than with myself. Together with him I had just made an insane journey of two and a half weeks through Japan and China. When we came back the fruit was not good. My father had the feeling that it was his fault, that it was because of that intensive journey. He was very concerned about that, I found that so annoying. I could give it a place for myself, it’s a thing of the past, just like my ‘bumpy’ birth. That may also come back if I ever go up for a second one, but now I enjoy my child so much that I don’t want to think about those things anymore. Today’s happiness predominates.”
Changes
Of course parenthood sometimes has difficult moments, but thinking out loud they always have to do with sleep deprivation, concludes Lizzy.
“We are lucky that Jagger sleeps well, although that was for a period less. Then you suddenly notice that you function a lot less. I’m pretty good at pushing, but without sleep I’m extra irritable,” she laughs. It helps that she can share these struggles with loved ones. “My brother, niece and I all had a child at the same time. That’s really great, we see each other a lot and we can ask each other anything. Since we are in exactly the same situation, we really understand each other. It is nice to be able to support each other in all those different phases.”
“I could be quite selfish, motherhood has made me sweeter”
For example, Jagger is currently in an ignorant phase. “It’s mommy before and mommy after right now. Like this morning when the nanny came. Initially nothing is wrong, until I officially hug Jagger goodbye. Then it’s crying. And even though I know it’s over as soon as I walk out the door, I still find it hard to leave. I didn’t expect that from myself.”
Motherhood has softened her. “And rather, according to my mother and sister. I understand what they say. I could be quite selfish; if something doesn’t go my way, bye! I have that much less now, but maybe it’s about time,” she laughs.
The whole interview is in Kek Mama 03-2022.
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