I threw out my maternity clothes. It's over.

I threw out all my maternity clothes. I don’t need them any more. And I won’t ever need them again.

I decided for sure that my family was complete when I started an end of season clear out. My overstuffed wardrobe was making me feel gross, so in a window of unscheduled time in a weekend as crammed as my cupboards, I started sorting.

I’d forgotten about them. It hasn’t been that long. Less than two years. But those shorts with the elasticated waists? The old jeans I’d paid a ridiculous amount of money to have stretchy bellybands sewn into? Those endless empire-line dresses? They were all there. Looking at me.

And for a minute, while I procrastinated over what to do with them, I could picture every wear.

There were the jeans I wore in the early days, so desperate to grow out of them because I was impatient for my outside to match my inside – pregnant. It’s one of the few times in a woman’s life when she welcomes a straining waistband. The growing tummy, rightly or wrongly, assures you that everything’s okay.

There were those dresses that I used to wear to the office every day until my breasts, not my belly, were filling their space so fully the whole look was becoming Unsafe For Work. I’m surprised the material on the stomach wasn’t worn away, I rubbed my tummy so much. I began to realise that it made people uncomfortable, all that touching yourself in public, but mostly I didn’t realise I was doing it. I wasn’t rubbing myself, I was touching the babies, comforting as they were agitated and backflippy through the mornings, slow and sleepy in the afternoons.

There was the dress I clearly remembered wearing as I rushed to the hospital in a taxi, terrified at 20 weeks, wracked with fear that something terrible was happening to my first baby. And I remember the relief, days later, when I was still pregnant. Still in maternity clothes.

There's even a dress that I wore for the final trip, in labour in the middle of the night. Eeuw. I know it's been cleaned a hundred times since, but the sentimental reasons for keeping that one shouldn't outweigh the hygiene concerns. And then there's the stretchy pyjamas that I lived in around the house in those early weeks, easy access cotton shirts, feeding bras...

I took them all out of the wardrobe, and looked, and remembered, and thought about how, when you're living through those months they can seem to stretch on forever, with the worry, and the sickness, and the swollen feet, and the exhaustion, and the heat, and the worry. And the worry. But they've gone, those months, and many others since, and now life is how it is, and there are four of us. And these are just oversized clothes.

I'm surrounded by friends making decisions about whether they're 'done'. Some can't bring themselves to draw that line, some are squirrelling away the baby things in the attic, in sheds and under beds. But now, we don't need to talk about whether we're having another. We're done. We're old, and our luck was stretched like those cheap dresses, and patchy, and held out perfectly long enough to give us our two. But I wouldn't test it again.

They're just oversized clothes, and they're going in a bin bag and they're leaving this house. Because the baby-making days are gone. Now it's all about the family we have. And the clothes I have for a different kind of life. And they come in many sizes, because my body has stretched and shrunk and stretched and shrunk, and who even knows what bra size I am any more? But here's one size I'm not, and won't be again - maternity.

And yes, it's a little sad that it's over. Because you never hold your children so close to you again. But it's alright, because now I need a new uniform to see them on their way. That, and a decluttered wardrobe.

Do you know if your family is complete? How did you decide?