The 'Total Bellas' star reveals she and her fiancé want to be the best parents to son Matteo.
Nikki Bella and Artem Chigvintsev are trying to be the best parents to their son, Matteo. The Total Bellas star revealed that she and her dancer fiancé are planning on going to couples therapy.
"I was so supportive and pushing him out the door to go do Dancing [With the Stars] and then I realized once he left, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what did I do? Like, I need him.’ And so it was really hard," Bella shared during the Tamron Hall Show this week. "We’re going to start [therapy] after the season and it’s mainly just to be amazing parents and knowing how to balance parent life out and also our own relationship." Chigvintsev won the mirrorball trophy on Monday's DWTS finale.
"Because Artem and I don’t ever want to have a struggle. You know, we plan on being married," she continued.
Bella and Chigvintsev began dating in July 2019 and got engaged during their France trip in November. In July, they welcomed their first child together.
"We hear a lot of stories of where there’s sacrifice in their own relationship because it’s about the kids," she explained. "Artem and I, from the beginning, want to know: How do we balance this for Matteo and for our relationship?”
Just last month, Bella opened up to her twin sister, Brie, on their Bellas Podcast about the "massive breakdown" she had seven weeks after giving birth.
"I think Brie was the first person who’s asked me in weeks... she goes, 'How are you doing?' I was about to say, 'Fine,' and my lips started shaking and I burst into alligator tears. Like, I broke down," she said. "Because that was the first time someone asked me in a while how I was doing, and I wasn’t doing OK."
"The past few weeks have been tough. And not just having Matteo mostly by myself and doing it all on my own, there's so many other things," she said. "And it's crazy because I am very prideful. I'm competitive. I love being the best. I want to be number one. My whole life I've been an athlete, so I realized I've taken that mentality as being a mom. So it's like, 'Do it like an athlete.' No you can't do it that way at all."
That realization led her to have a "very serious" conversation with her doctor, which confirmed that she was "starting to fall into a postpartum depression."
The couple is set to move to Napa, California, now that Chigvintsev is done with the latest season of DWTS. ET spoke with the pro just moments after he and partner Kaitlyn Bristowe won season 29.
"I was thinking about where I was a year ago, exactly. Where I was not a part of last season, how I felt that [my] old dancing dreams were done and dusted, and that I was never going to be able to perform on that stage at all," Artem reflected. "And then just standing with Kaitlyn in the final and being called as the champion of the season? I mean, it was such a surreal moment that I never thought it would be, in the reality of this world."
For more on Chigvintsev and Bella, see below.
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