(If you DO want sex during any of these times / find your libido ramps up during pregnancy or returns quickly after birth, you are also normal, and you don’t have to read any further.)
Please please please remember that the six-week post-birth guideline is just about when it is SAFE and not risking internal infection to have sex. That does not mean you will feel like or want to have sex.
If you’re six weeks, or eight weeks, or twelve weeks, or even nine months postpartum, it is NORMAL to not have any desire for sex, or even to feel disgusted by it.
It can take people YEARS — think 2-5 — to feel that their libido is “resetting” after giving birth. Add time if you’ve been breastfeeding.
Having sex that you do not want or feel disgusted by is likely to make you even more averse to sex in the long term. I really hope no one here feels they have to have unwanted sex (ever, let alone when there are infants or toddlers in the picture) to “keep their partner happy” or “because their partner has needs” or for any other reason.
Your body is focusing its resources on your child and preventing you from creating another child that could compete for those resources. Your body is working exactly as it evolved to do.
We have to do a better job shifting cultural expectations about how people who’ve recently given birth may or may not feel about sex and what their partners should expect in the first ~2 years after having children.
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I didn’t even touch on birth injuries or pelvic floor dysfunction and painful sex because honestly if your partner doesn’t understand that having pain during sex is an extremely valid reason to not want and not have sex (ALL reasons to not have sex are valid but come on) then your partner is not a safe person to have sex with.
I’m hardly an expert on the subject, but it’s just common sense as well that being utterly exhausted from raising a baby and getting hardly any sleep is also going to have a massive impact on libido. And a supportive partner should really be just as tired in those initial months…