Hoping to get some opinions. Any insight from anyone who has been in this situation before is highly appreciated as well!
Background: me and my husband are both 30yo, together for 7 years, married for 3. We've been TTC since mid 2020, I had a miscarriage mid-2021 and got pregnant again shortly afterwards. Currently 39weeks pregnant with our first child. We used to have sex every day when we met, that dwindled to every few days or so as the years went on, then maybe once a week to every other day during fertile window when TTC. I think our sex drives took a hit with the stress of TTC + the pandemic, but overall we've always been pretty compatible in that aspect.
About my partner: He is very excited to be a father, we've both wanted kids ever since we met and he was ecstatic when this pregnancy finally worked out. He's in perfect health and peak physical shape. He's not afraid having sex will hurt the baby (we had this conversation early on).
Current situation: We haven't had any sexual contact for approx. 4 months. We do cuddle occasionally, but most days we don't go past a hug and quick peck on the lips. For trimester 1 and 2 I didn't feel up to it much, I felt bloated and constipated a lot in the beginning, and then I just didn't feel sexy. We had sex infrequently during the first 5 months (2-3 times month maybe). I've felt absolutely horrible about my body the entire pregnancy, just looking at myself in the mirror makes me want to cry sometimes. I gained quite a lot of weight and have a bunch of new stretch marks and cellulite. I was very skinny before (I used to model when I was younger) and wasn't terribly far off modelling weight (which my husband says he finds unattractive anyway), being very much on the lower end of a normal BMI. That said, my face still looks mostly the same and everyone around me says I look great and they wouldn't know I was pregnant looking at me from behind.
All that taken into account, my sex drive has gone through the roof in the third trimester. Although my husband has always been the main initiator of sex, I certainly make myself available. In the last month or so, I've made it abundantly clear, both verbally and physically that I'm more than up for physical intimacy.
What he says: we finally had a conversation about this today after I've been crying all day. He denies it's the case, but I feel like he's been touching me less and less by the day. Every now and again I complain about feeling distant and he makes an effort to be more touchy for a couple of days or so but it feels awful because I know it's forced (and still no sexual contact of any kind). As to sex, husband says we never talked about it just "stopped doing it". He says he thought I didn't want to have sex as I've been so uncomfortable throughout the pregnancy and he also would have felt like an A-h*le asking for a BJ or something like that for the same reason. He's never flat out asked me for either a BJ or sex for reference, it's just something that naturally happened when we cuddled or were in bed watching TV etc. These explanations would somewhat make sense if I hadn't literally been begging for some kind of sexual contact in the last month+.
He tells me every day that I'm beautiful, that he doesn't care about the weight and stretch marks, that he's so proud of me for doing this amazing thing. On the other hand, his actions make me feel otherwise since he seems to have 0 interest in being intimate with me.
It just doesn't make sense to me that a young and healthy man would have 0 desire for any sexual contact whatsoever for a period of 4, possibly at least 6 months (he's well aware of the minimum 6 weeks post birth recovery time). He's never been one to pressure me for anything sexual and never complained if I turned it down for whatever reason, but he's never gone half this long without at least TRYING for something.
If he's got some kind of issue with sex itself I could understand, and I might feel the same if the tables were turned, but I wish he would just flat out say it rather than saying I'm beautiful but going out of his way to avoid any physical intimacy. Even then, I still don't think that would justify having no sexual contact whatsoever when I've made clear I'm up for other things as well.
My fears: I've been reading a lot about how some people's sex lives never recover after a situation like this, how partner's sometimes just don't see you like that anymore or are just not attracted to post-baby body, others develop porn addictions which end up tanking relationships as well etc. It also doesn't help that every time he takes longer to come home my mom, sister and grandma say he's probably cheating on me. Basically how the "bond" between two people is broken after a long period of a dead bedroom situation. I don't believe he has a porn addiction and have no other reason to believe he is cheating aside from the lack of sexual advances towards me for such a long period of time, we've never even had a fight over jealousy.
Currently I have no idea if my body will ever be the same as it was, neither do I have any indication of whether or not his sexual attraction to me will ever return (or if it's even gone for sure, though I believe it is), let alone at 6 weeks post-birth. I already resent him for the lack of straight-forwardness with what his reasons for not wanting intimacy are, and feel extremely distant from him.