Bleeding After Ten Days of Nifas and the Three Days of Istizhar — Jurisprudential Answers — Book of Purification

Ahmed al-Hasan Response:

This concerns postnatal bleeding. It means that if a woman in nifas continues to bleed even after completing the ten days of nifas, she looks at the characteristics of what is coming out. If it has the characteristics of istihada, she treats it as istihada; if it does not, she treats it as menstruation. As for the rulings of what she has treated as menstruation: if she had a fixed numerical menstrual habit before pregnancy, she counts as menstruation the number of days she already knows, and what follows is istihada. If she did not have a fixed numerical habit before pregnancy, she counts menstruation according to the number of days of the women among her relatives; if their habits differ, she counts seven days. If the bleeding continues after the menstrual period she has determined, she does not treat all the bleeding after nifas as menstruation; rather, she observes only three additional days, and treats the remainder as istihada. For example, a woman whose numerical habit is five days gives birth and continues bleeding for eighteen days. The first ten days are nifas. On the eleventh day she examines the blood and cannot identify in it the characteristics of istihada, so it may be menstrual blood. Initially she treats it as menstruation. If it stops after she completes the days of her habit, then it was menstruation and she was correct in identifying it, and nothing is due from her. But if it continues, as in this example, she then does not treat all of it as menstruation. She treats only the first three days after the end of nifas as days of istizhar, which are treated like days of menstruation, and she does not have to make up the prayers she left during them.