Well, I guess I need to take back what I wrote recently about Nikki Bella starting to have sex again at 6 weeks postpartum, with her doctor’s approval… because according to Bella herself, even the seemingly early 6-week mark was too long to wait for sex.
“I didn’t even make it to the six-week point, I just started at five,” Nikki told her twin sister and fellow postpartum mom Brie Bella this week on The Bellas Podcast of her postpartum sex drive. “I was like I’m healed, I’m fine.”
“You talked about throwing your postpartum panties…” Brie pointed out, referencing Nikki’s “hidden cam” Instagram makeout/dance session which Nikki captioned with commentary about “getting her groove back” and “postpartum panties out the door.”
Well, she didn’t mean out the door, literally, Nikki clarified this week on the podcast.
“Maybe I should’ve said like in the trash,” Nikki admitted to Brie on the recording. “I reread it and I’m like, oh my god, I totally did make it like Artem’s throwing my panties out the door.”
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So what did she really mean it as? “Away! Like I’m done!” Nikki clarified. “Like I’m not bleeding, there’s nothing wrong. No more postpartum panties. They’re out the door.”
But five weeks, though?? While every birth parent’s experience with and timeline for postpartum sex is different, the standard medical advice is to wait until your six-week postpartum checkup for your doctor to assess how you’re healing and give the all clear to re-start sex. And as we’ve said before, if you don’t feel ready for sex at six weeks — or six months! — that is totally normal and healthy too. We need not all be a Bella.
Plus, “waiting will also give your body time to heal,” explains The Mayo Clinic site regarding postpartum sex. “In addition to postpartum discharge and vaginal tears, you might experience fatigue, vaginal dryness, pain and low sexual desire. If you had a vaginal tear that required surgical repair, you might need to wait longer. Hormonal changes might leave your vagina dry and tender, especially if you’re breast-feeding. You might experience some pain during sex if you’re healing from an episiotomy or perineal tears.”
Eesh. And yet, if Bella truly felt fine, it’s fine, right? Well:
“Last night, it didn’t seem fine,” Nikki admitted to her sister on the podcast. “I felt like organs were about to drop out,” she laughed. Okay, we’re a little terrified now.
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Luckily, it’s pretty unlikely Bella is losing any organs here; she’s more likely experiencing a looseness of the pelvic floor muscles after, you know, recently using them to push out a person. Midwife Chloe Lubell told SheKnows that a great idea before jumping into sex this early is getting a checkup of said pelvic floor with a trained physical therapist, if you can access one. She also added that Kegel exercises alone aren’t enough to retrain those muscles.
“The issue is that some people have such tight pelvic muscles, they find they spasm. So tightening those muscles isn’t going to help.”
We’ve said it before, but we really truly just hope Nikki is being forthcoming with her doctor about all this. That, and we hope she’s back on birth control already.
“It has happened,” Lubell says, “where I’ll see the look of shock and horror when someone comes back at their six-week checkup and you tell them they’re pregnant.”
Insert scream-face emoji here, because that’s all this here mama has to say on that topic.
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