More recent reviews confirm that sexual function and desire during the first postpartum year are not determined by birth alone. Mode of delivery, tissue injury, breastfeeding, pelvic-floor health, psychological wellbeing, relationship quality and many other factors can all matter. Comparing yourself with someone else’s “we were having sex again after six weeks” is therefore not especially useful.
Then there is mental load — the invisible cognitive work of continuously managing family life. It is not only feeding the baby; it is remembering the doctor appointment, noticing which clothes no longer fit, knowing what needs to be bought tomorrow and wondering why the baby has suddenly slept badly for three nights. Not all of this work is visible in the number of bottles someone washed.
That is why rebuilding intimacy after becoming parents does not always begin with lingerie, date nights or a new sexual technique. Sometimes the more important question is much less glamorous: Do both adults ever get the chance to stop being only parents and feel like separate people again?
Sex after children does not have to become a copy of what existed before. A couple may develop a new sexual life — but that life usually has to find its place inside a completely new one.