The ugly side of blogging

Hi everyone. There is a blog that I'm sure many of you have visited in the past few months. It featured the story of "B" a young unwed mother to be who was expecting a little baby, April Rose. Little April had been diagnosed with Trisomy 13 in utero and was not expected to survive. Against all odds, April did survive to full term and was born a day or two ago much to my delight and to a lot of other readers as well. Then all of a sudden, the site had most of its content deleted and there are now rumors all over the internet that the whole thing was an elaborate hoax designed for everything from attention to money gained from people's sympathetic donations as well as advetisements on the blog.



I have been a follower of "B" and April's for many months now. I have shed many tears and I rejoiced when April was born alive. At the moment I really don't know what to believe and I just find the whole thing extremely sad. I know someone whose little boy was born with Trisomy 13 and died just moments after his birth, and I know first hand the torment that she experienced. It is something I would not wish upon my worst enemy and this is particularly brought home to me now that I am a mother myself. I feel so sad and hurt at the possibility that while all of us were touched emotionally by April, there might have been someone behind the scenes having a laugh at our expense. I find the thought of that really disgusting and cruel.



But on the other hand, none of us really know for sure if it IS a hoax. For all we know somewhere out there in the big wide world there really is an April who is fighting for life and hanging on to each breath, while her distraught mother looks on helpless. All the while this brand new family is being pushed down by emails of hate and rumours that their struggle and their sorrow is fictional. That would be more than I could bear, I'm sure. I hope whatever has happened - fact or fiction - that everything turns out as well as it can in the end.



Whatever has taken place here has sparked a confession of my own. I hate the thought of dishonesty I really do and so I have to let everyone in on something because it is not sitting right with me after the events of today with this blog. My name is fictional. Nothing else about me is. I have struggled with infertility, I have an almost 5 month old son from an IVF cycle, and I am in the middle of another IVF cycle as I write this. I have a beautiful husband who cooks chicken wellington and a wonderful sister in law who is expecting a baby in December following a miscarriage last year. The only part of the story I have changed is our names.



I am really very sorry if this upsets anyone, but I feel I had a good reason. I touched on the topic of my sister briefly a few posts back and the reason for my anonymity on my blog is mainly because of something she did. If you missed the first post explaining about her let me explain again that my sister struggles with addiction, is very mixed up and doesn't behave rationally. Throughout my journey through infertility I was a regular on a message board on a certain website for infertile women. I poured my heart out to the women there and made many friends. After a few years I discovered one of those women was my sister posing as someone and using the message board to befriend me and find out details about my life. Apparently she googled me and because my nickname on the site was identical to my nickname in my email address she located me quite easily on the message boards and I guess she thought it would be fun to play this trick on me. When I decided to blog here I decided instead of using my real name and exposing my family to her games again, that I would pick a name I liked for me and the other people in my life to be known as in order to protect our privacy.

Once again I apologise and hope I haven't offended anyone. To be honest i started blogging mainly for myself and never really thought I'd get any readers who would be interested in my life! So I didn't think this issue would really matter in the long term. But I love all the friendship you guys have given me and I don't want to be dishonest even if it's just a little white lie. I'd still like to be known as Paxton if that's ok and for my little boy to be Nickie etc. I feel more comfortable that way in light of past events which I have explained. It's not because I don't trust anyone here, it's just that nothing on the net is really private is it? :) I hope you will still remain my friends and my readers and that you don't feel I have been deceitful to you, and that you will all allow me to remain your friend too. I am loving sharing our journies with each other and I do wish that I could be as brave as some of you all are being putting your whole life out there in the world wide web, unashamedly.

Your friend still - I hope!
"Paxton"