Mazal tov on the birth of your baby!
It is normal for postpartum bleeding to stop and then start up again.
We follow the view that blood found on
toilet paper after a woman waits between urinating and wiping is treated as a stain on a surface that is not susceptible to ritual impurity and does not disrupt the
clean days. Therefore, your clean days continue as planned unless you see blood exit your body, or find
niddah-colored stains on your body or on white underwear large enough to disrupt the clean days, or if the bleeding becomes heavy enought to be considered a flow. (See our page on
stains for more details of these halachot.)
It is generally recommended to perform at least one
bedikah between days one and seven. That way, if the day-seven
bedikah is omitted, a woman can do a
bedikah the following day and does not need to restart the clean days from the beginning. However, this is not a requirement, and the clean days are valid with only the
hefsek taharah, one
bedikah on day one, and one
bedikah on day seven.
Therefore, if you are concerned about continued staining, you might want to wait until the seventh day to perform your next
bedikah.
On the other hand, if there is an intermediate day when there seems to be a break in the staining, you might want to attempt a
bedikah then. If it is valid, this gives you more leeway to postpone the final
bedikah if you are staining on day seven. As a rule, if no more than five days go by without a
bedikah, the clean days remain valid (e.g.,
bedikot on days 1, 4, and 10).
We hope the staining abates and that you can get to the mikveh soon. Learn more about getting to the mikveh postpartum
here.
Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.
