Down to the wire. Artem Chigvintsev worried about his new role as a father just ahead of Nikki Bella’s birth.
“What I’m nervous about the most is you have a certain attachment to it,” the Dancing With the Stars pro, 38, told his fiancée, 37, in Us Weekly’s exclusive clip of the Thursday, January 14, Total Bellas episode. “I don’t have the same attachment because it’s not within me for nine months.”
The season 29 winner added in a confessional: “I’m s–ting myself. I’m sitting in the car thinking, ‘This is it.’ You don’t really get it until you process it. I’m like, ‘The water broke. The water broke? Oh s–t.’”
The former professional wrestler told the Russia native on their way to the hospital that fatherhood was “going to come very natural[ly]” to him. The “Total Bellas Podcast” cohost added, “You’re gonna be an amazing dad.”
As for her feelings, the California native couldn’t “wait to experience” motherhood. “I’m about to push a life out of me,” the Incomparable coauthor said in a confessional. “That is crazy. I cannot wait for that. I cannot wait to meet Matteo. Who does he look like? Artem, me, is he a mix? I cannot wait. It’s sinking in as I walk into the hospital, this is the last time it’s gonna be just Artem and I.”
The couple welcomed their baby boy in July 2020. When it comes to giving Matteo a sibling, the pair aren’t on the same page.
“I honestly want to be one and done,” Bella exclusively told Us Weekly in November 2020. “Artem really wants a little girl, but I just don’t know if I could do it again. … Artem and I talk about living in Paris for, like, three months or, like, he may go do some theater stuff in London. And so with just Matteo, it’s easy for us to just move around if we want to. So I like that.”
The E! personality added at the time that she didn’t “feel sexy at all” in her postpartum body, but Chigvintsev was helping her “feel beautiful.”
Bella explained, “Today I got the most passionate kiss before he left to rehearsals, and he’s good doing things for me that make me feel still good about myself and sexy.”
News broke in January 2019 that she and the dancer had started dating, and they got engaged in November of that same year. They announced in January 2020 that they were starting a family.
Total Bellas airs on E! Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET.
