sqlite regex: How return count of 'X' from values in column

i am using pandasql to transform data. Inside a query i would like to pull out for example the number of periods ('.') in the email address. SQLite does not seem to support regex.

In SQL i could write:

length(regexp_replace(email, '[^.]', '', 'g')) as email_period

*#applying this to the email (my.first_name@abc.com) would return 2*

Look forward to your expertise for a solution with SQLite. Thank you in advance.