Growing up, all the coolest celebrities had belly button rings. Britney Spears had one, Christina Aguilera had one, and unfortunately for her, mom Melinda Strauss has one — and now she's sharing why it's a big mistake. Strauss recently took to TikTok to share what a belly button piercing after pregnancy looks like and the exact reasons why no one should get a belly button ring if they plan to get pregnant.
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The mom made her case in response to this prompt: 'What’s a mistake you learned the hard way that you can now help others avoid?'
The mom's message was simple — “Don’t get a belly button ring,” she said in a video from March 2021.
“I know they’re cute, they’re fun, you can accessorize [them],” she said. “Don’t do it unless you’re never planning to have kids and then go for it.”
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The problem with a belly button piercing after pregnancy isn't the ring itself — it’s what happens to the hole once your bump starts to grow.
Some people might even choose to keep their ring in while they’re pregnant, but “that always scared me,” Strauss explained — either way, what a belly button piercing looks like after pregnancy wasn't pretty.
“Your belly gets really, really big, and so does the hole from the belly button ring, and then everything deflates after you have your baby,” she explained.
Like so many other parts of your body, she says your belly button ring doesn’t go back to 'normal' after you give birth.
“It becomes like a second belly button,” she explained. “And it’s not cute. I had a regular belly button and then I had a second belly button.”
More than 3.7 million people have since watched Strauss’ video, and the opinion on the mom's advice was divided.
Some people were grossed out.
“At the beach I hook my keys on mine,” one person joked.
“Tell me you lived through the ‘90s without telling me you lived through the '90s,” another commenter wrote.
“Wow yet another reason not to have children the list keeps growing,” a third commenter chimed in.
Other people had the opposite experience.
“Sorry this happened to u but this did not happen to me,” someone commented.
“I took mine out during pregnancy and had none of these issues,” another commenter added.
And then there were the unfortunate bunch of commenters who saw Strauss’ message a little too late.
“Lol well it’s too late for me,” one commenter wrote. “We’ll see what happens.”
Clearly, this is a real "Your Mileage Might Vary" situation, but at the very least you can't say you weren't warned.
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