Some of the pages are getting quite long in the comments, so I've added a forum to the site as an experiment. If successful, I am planning to migrate the comments from fixed pages on the site. Comments on individual blog posts will stay.

I'd also like to encourage question asking and discussion.

Please add any forum ideas to the Requests & Ideas forum.

So the petition closed last night. 3,880 people signed it and Thank You to all of you who did. It reached number 48 in over 8,200 petitions, and was 12th in over 1,000 Health related petitions, which shows how much we mind about our Mums.

I wish I'd been able to tell more people that it was there for the signing - if I had I know there would have been even more signatures. I look forward to hearing the government's reply to it. (A response to any petition with over 200 signatories is promised.)

It is not the end though. The objective wasn't to get thousands of signatures, but to save lives, and the work will go on.

I have to mention some fellow bloggers. These ladies have really helped by condensing this website into one succinct post, and have written more eloquently than I could have hoped for. In chronological order, thank you to:

BreastfeedingMum, LittleLegends, Manicmama, IngeniousRose and 21st Century Mummy

Thank you also to everyone who has emailed their friends, posted in a forum or mentioned this website on their own site or over a coffee.

Please, don't stop helping to save a mother's life. We can do it, one at a time.

Although creating the original version of this website was easy - I thought up the idea and designed it in my head during a 75 minute car journey to stay with my parents for the Easter weekend, and had the first draft created by Easter Sunday - the idea of a blog was harder.

I wanted to enable people reading the website to have a say in it, but shyed away from enabling comments in any form for ages. It wasn't until a night with a curry and bottle of wine with an old friend from school days that I decided: "Yes, a blog." To not untick the 'allow all comments' box wasn't that hard - it's a natural progression, after all what's a blog without comments?

What's the purpose of this blog? Well, there were many. It's a way, for me, of keeping focused on the website and campaign, it gives visitors to the site a small view into what drives me, and it helps me get a load off my chest (though I'm still saving most of that for later).

I hope some of it is interesting, I hope that there is something to learn from it, I know some of it has brought a tear to an eye more than once; Jessica's friends in particular have told me so.

However, back to the comments: I feared them initially, it would have been easier not to allow their addition, and I could have pretended that no one was reading me, but you are and the comments that are being left now drive me on - you only have to read them to see that.

I've received even more that have come by email, and sometimes I stumble across a mother/baby/pregnancy forum from my website logs, and the posts and follow-up comments there are heart-rending, beautiful, supportive and full of horror (although probably not meant directly for my eyes, so I keep quiet.)

Universally, there are stories of pain and heartache, of illness, of anger and most touchingly, of very sincere thanks.

Thank you.

I sometimes feel, when I'm a web reader rather than a writer, that web sites and the people behind them can be a bit intimidating, so I observe but don't get involved.

I imagine that Jessica's trust may be the same. I write, I craft and I create a petition, but short of the petition signers, I only get a little feedback. I'd love to have more, but the stories, comments and observations that I do hear are so powerful that I wonder if I could take in any more. Do try me though, it makes it all worthwhile.

For this reason I set up the Your Say page. It isn't about me or Jessica any more, it's about the future mother and her family, so they deserve to be heard as well. Maybe commenting on a blog will be more approachable. I hope so, so go on: have your say!

Well, finally. I've been meaning to start a blog here for a while, but haven't had a chance to kick it off. There's much to write, so hopefully there'll be something worth reading - just give me enough time.