Total Bellas: Nikki Bella asks Artem Chigvintsev to move in with her after going alone freezing eggs

Nikki Bella took her relationship with boyfriend Artem Chigvintsev to the next level on Thursday’s episode of Total Bellas by asking him to move in with her.

The 36-year-old former WWE wrestler wanted to show Artem, 37, that she cared even though she wasn’t ready to commit to having children with him.

She’d already decided to freeze her eggs to preserve her fertility, instead of creating embryos with Artem, who desperately wanted kids.

Artem was so sure of their love he went ring shopping for Nikki with her twin Brie, 36, hoping to finally pop the question to his girlfriend.

‘It’s a big commitment to make, but I want Nicole to see and feel that I’m here for the long term,’ Artem noted in a confessional. ‘It just feels really right.’

In January, Nikki and Artem announced that they were pregnant with their first child, just as Brie and her husband Bryan Danielson, 38, revealed they were having their second. 

After a seemingly unending stay at Brie’s house, Nikki was thrilled to be finally moving into her own new home, which she’d had built next door.

Artem suggested that she have a black cat enter the space first, per a Russian tradition that said it was good luck to do so, possibly because it ‘scared away’ the ghosts.

With no black cat in sight, Nikki dressed her dog Winston up in a black cat costume, and took her immediate family over to view the property.

‘This feels like a totally new chapter in my life,’ Nikki said, proud of the fact that she’d bought the place herself. ‘Nicole is back. I’m independent. It makes me feel really good.’

Nikki added that she was glad Artem was working in another city that day, saying she wanted to cherish the fact that she’d accomplished her dream ‘without a man.’

Empowered by that experience, she decided to take the reins of her life in another way, consulting with an ob-gyn about her fertility potential after a recent pregnancy scare.

Nikki knew that her eggs were dwindling fast, and she was curious about her actual ability to have children, saying, ‘I want to be a mom one day. I really do.’

As she filled out the office’s paperwork, she stopped at a question that asked for her current birth control method, and mused, ‘Pull out?’

‘You can’t write that, right?’ she asked her mother, Kathy Laurinaitis, 56, who accompanied her. ‘I just write ”none”?’

In their consultation, Nikki’s doctor told her that at her age, she should be thinking about freezing her eggs.

Nikki said she didn’t think she’d be ready to get pregnant for ‘a few years,’ and privately added that she didn’t want to talk to Artem about it as he might try to influence her.

‘It’s about me,’ she said. ‘Me as a woman and my body, and I want to make those decisions on my own.’

‘Babies don’t wait,’ the doctor cautioned her. ‘If you really want to have a family, I don’t want you to keep pushing it. Forty is risky… you’re playing with fire.’

Nikki was informed that she’d do even better to create embryos with Artem, if she was ‘100 percent sure’ she was going to stay with him, since they would be more viable.

‘Freezing eggs, creating embryos… it’s kind of a lot to think about,’ Nikki mused. ‘That’s like having frozen children out there. It’s being bound to someone forever. I just, I can’t do that.’

‘I love my partner that I’m with, but I’m just not craving those things,’ she told the doctor, who rejoined that it was fine as long as Nikki was ‘okay with not getting pregnant.’

The next time she saw Artem, Nikki told him she’d decided to freeze her eggs, but not make embryos with him, which he found disconcerting.

‘It’s just, we’re not married,’ she pointed out. ‘We’ve been dating a year.’

Artem wondered when Nikki was going to go ‘all in’ on their relationship, saying, ‘Decisions like that, when you’re in a relationship, shouldn’t be made by one person.’

‘But it’s my body,’ Nikki protested, to which Artem replied, ‘I understand, but it’s still our lives.’

Nikki later discussed her doubts about Artem with Brie as the two of them hosted a promotional event for their wine label.

‘If Artem were to propose to you tomorrow, would you say yes?’ Brie asked her, and Nikki admitted that she didn’t know.

‘Look, I want to marry Artem, but not today,’ Nikki offered.

Brie told the cameras that Nikki had always said she wanted to be a ‘wife and mother,’ but ‘every time she gets close to that, she freaks out.’

She wanted to help Nikki move closer to a commitment to Artem, as she knew her sister loved him with ‘all her heart.’

Brie told Nikki she was worried that Artem might break up with her if they didn’t get married and have kids, because he’d expressed how much he wanted that.

Later, she met Artem for coffee, and he admitted that he had wondered whether he and Nikki were in ‘the wrong relationship.’

He didn’t want to have a baby ‘tomorrow,’ he swore, but he did want to marry Nikki someday.

Brie offered to connect Artem with her ‘diamond guy’ if he ever wanted to go ‘ring shopping,’ adding that he was ‘very private… so no one will ever see you walk in and out.’

She showed Artem her wedding ring, and said, ‘Mine’s a 1.9 carat. ‘I always hear my sister saying she’d like a five.’

‘Cool, I’m gonna go sell my liver,’ Artem cracked.

In the days that followed, Artem and Nikki talked about the disconnect in their relationship.

Nikki explained that she was worried what would happen to their embryos if they broke up.

‘But what if we don’t?’ Artem returned.

To make him feel better, Nikki asked Artem to consider moving in with her full-time, and he happily agreed.

‘Moving in, that is the next step, that’s like moving forward in the relationship, which is what I want to do,’ Artem said in a confessional, looking gleeful.

‘And then you can support me when I freeze my eggs,’ Nikki joked.

In the next scene, Artem and Brie visited a jeweler to look at rings for Nikki.

‘I see Nicole as my forever partner, and the whole conversation about moving in together made me feel like, ”Okay, this is what’s happening”,’ Artem said, grinning.

But as he looked at rings costing between $70,000 to $1 million, he blanched, and someone off-camera said they needed to bring him a drink.

‘I want to propose and I want it to be perfect, but seeing what I can afford versus what I think she deserves is in a different realm,’ Artem told the cameras.

‘Let’s just keep it between us,’ he said to Brie. ‘When I do it, I don’t want it to be a known fact. It should always be unexpected.’

Elsewhere on the show, Brie was concerned to see that Nikki’s new house wasn’t ‘toddler-friendly,’ and worried that her three-year-old daughter Birdie might get hurt there.

She and Bryan offered to split the $30,000 cost of a safety gate with Nikki, and told her that they even made one in her favorite Louis Vuitton logo.

At first, Nikki was unmoved, even when Brie brought Birdie over to the pool and threatened to post ‘Pool Capacity Rules’ signs around it.

Nikki responded by throwing the signs over the wall onto Brie’s property.

For fun, she then bought Brie a walkie-talkie, and radioed her from her own house, giving herself the handle ‘Boner Crusher.’

She dubbed Brie ‘Debbie Downer,’ and called Artem ‘Tiny Dancer.’

As they gabbed, Brie thanked Nikki, telling her that she was ‘a really good sport with all my craziness.’

‘Wow, it took a walkie-talkie for you to admit that?’ Nikki asked. ‘Thank you.’

She told her sister she would get the pool gate and buy a cover for her pool, too.

Total Bellas will return next week on the E! network.