By Monica Novak —

As I walked into the house on a Friday morning, my husband, Al, handed me the front page of the Chicago Tribune.  “I think you should read this,” he said. The headline story read, “Blogger’s baby a hoax.” An unmarried Chicago suburban woman named Beccah, also known as “April’s mom”, had been blogging for two months about her pregnancy with a terminally ill baby, gaining support from thousands of people nationwide who encouraged her to continue the pregnancy.

By the time Beccah claimed to have given birth at home to a girl named April Rose who died hours later, even posting a photo of her alleged baby wrapped in a white blanket, her blogsite had one million hits. The photo tipped people off. The “baby” was actually a lifelike doll, and followers who recognized the doll realized the truth, which Beccah later admitted.

There was no baby. At least not this time. But as Beccah apologized and tried to explain her actions, she confided that she had indeed lost a son shortly after birth in 2005. Her blog, she said, was in part an attempt to help her deal with that loss.

The personal irony of the story’s timing was not lost on me. I had just come from Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital where I had been invited to speak before a national nursing review board about the community outreach of the hospital’s Share pregnancy and infant loss support program.

When my daughter, Miranda, was stillborn there 14 years earlier, we were given immediate support–physical, emotional, and spiritual-helping us to say hello and goodbye to our baby. After we went home, the Share program walked alongside us on the grief journey by way of support group meetings, memorial services, and personal one-on-one counseling when needed.

Those services are provided free of charge to anyone in the community, regardless of where you delivered your baby. Hospitals, churches, and communities all over the United States offer Share or similar support programs. For those who don’t have a group in their immediate area, help is available by phone or online from national organizations like Share, Compassionate Friends, Miss Foundation, and many others.

Beccah’s fabricated story greatly angered her followers who had formed an emotional connection to her.  But I can’t help but feel a certain amount of sympathy and compassion for a mother who experienced the death of her son and four years later still seems to be struggling to come to terms with her loss.

I can’t help but wonder, did she hold her son, name him, get a photo of him? Did she have any emotional support in the hospital or at home in the days, months, and years that followed? If the answers to those questions are no, how might this story have been different if the answers to those questions had been yes?

Monica Novak is the author of The Good Grief Club, a memoir about her friendships with six other women that carried them through the ups and downs of grief following the loss of their babies in miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant death.  She also serves as editor of Open to Hope’s Pregnancy and Infant Loss page at www.opentohopepregnancyloss.com . For more information about her book, and for pregnancy loss and infant death resources, please visit her website at www.thegoodgriefclub.com or e-mail her at monica@thegoodgriefclub.com.