Step 1: Recognise PPCM as a diagnosis of exclusion - new-onset systolic heart failure related to pregnancy, with no prior heart disease and no alternative cause for the failure.
Step 2: The accepted timing comes from Pearson's criteria, which bracket the onset to the final month of gestation through the first 5 months postpartum, together with echocardiographic LV dysfunction.
Step 3: Comparing the choices, the postpartum boundary of 5 months corresponds exactly to the criterion, making "within 5 months" the answer.
Step 4: The other intervals fail the definition: 7 days and 6 weeks truncate the recognised window, while 24 months extends well beyond it and would misclassify unrelated dilated cardiomyopathies. So the correct cut-off is 5 months.
\[\boxed{\text{Within 5 months}}\]