Critics Take Shots at McKMaMa

Copycat. Dork. Moronic. Creep.

Sound like the cruel name calling of kids on the playground? No, they're actually the names mothers use in a special blog created to question Jennifer McKinney, known to her blog readers as McKMama.

McKinney has raced to the top of the multi-million dollar mommy blog market, so maybe is was inevitable she would become a target.

In the beginning, McKinney was a typical mom blogger, one of tens of thousands of women writing about their kids, parenting and recipes on the internet. But then she started to write about Stellan, her unborn baby who doctors said wouldn't survive a catastrophic heart ailment.

McKinney wrote with raw emotion and readers responded, writing Stellan's name all over the world and sending pictures to McKinney's blog -- a kind of viral prayer chain that not only linked readers but pulled Jennifer McKinney out of icy waters.

"Ours is a story of people who surrounded us and the grace and the goodness, "McKinney said. "The goodness of mankind."

Then Stellan lived.

Readers stuck with the McKinney family and the blog grew. McKinney quickly became a player in a multi-million dollar digital industry.

"I got a lot of requests from advertisers," McKinney said. "Can I advertise on your blog?"

Chris Wexler, an online advertising expert at Campbell Mithun, said mommy blogs get viewed 300 million times each month, which can bring in a lot of money.

"Millions of dollars a month are going from Proctor and Gamble and General Mills and Schwans to mommy bloggers," Wexler said. "It makes sense. They're working hard, why not make a little money, or a lot of money."

At first, McKinney resisted, admitted it didn't feel right, but she agreed on terms the money would go to a charity for families. Then, close friends urged her to reconsider.

"My family was completely struggling financially," McKinney said. We were behind in the mortgage, my husband's business was struggling. So we prayed about it, we thought about it and, at that point, we put a second ad in the blog with the intention that the extra income we would make would help our family."

That's when the critics came calling, commenting on her blog and creating an online community devoted to "Question McKMama." Comments accuse McKinney of exploiting her children and Stellan's illness, including a post that says she should "change Stellan's name to Cash Cow."

"That I do take personally," McKinney said of the criticism. "Probably because my mothering and my love for my children is one of the proudest parts of my life."

The online community has accused Jennifer McKinney of exaggerating Stellan's illness and Photoshopping into pictures of Stellans th cord she attaches to his monitors each time he goes down for a nap. The cord is real.

"It's helped me realize that when other people decide to be negative it's a reflection on them," McKinney said. "They've found real dirt but drew their own conclusions."

Dirt like the fact her husband was arrested twice for domestic abuse after two verbally abusive and threatening arguments -- a fact her critics say should have been revealed before she handed out relationship advice.

"A lot of the dissension is I was open but I didn't really share, and that's not how I see it," cKinney said. "I see it as I was open. If you read back last July, you can read where I said if my marriage makes it, it's going to be by the skin of our teeth because we're in a hard season. I wrote that, but I didn't say because I called the cops on my husband last week and he got arrested."

McKinney says she never thought details that personal would ever be revealed.

"Those were things we didn't even share with our closest friends," she said. "Partly because it wasn't just my story to tell. It involved my husband."

Israel McKinney pleaded guilty to misdemeanor domestic assault and took anger management classes.

"My mistakes are my mistakes, whether people know about them or not," he said. "I think struggles are opportunities for people in general to grow and develop."

Jennifer and Israel McKinney are still in counseling. They say their marriage has never been stronger, even with the unexpected outing of its darkest episodes.

"I wish I never would have been in a position where I felt like I had to call the police," McKinney said. "But one the other hand, the truth is that God just brought beauty from those ashes because we were at such a low place."

Trickier to deal with were the financial questions critics revealed, including the McKinneys facing foreclosure.

"It was awful," McKinney said. "When Stellan was hospitalized, when I had to be hospitalized my husband had to take time off work, so even though we tried at that point not to live beyond our means, our means changed, so we got into financial trouble very quickly."

When they managed to buy a bigger but less expensive house in the country, Jennifer McKinney was back on the defensive, explaining on her blog that none of the money she collected for a charity went toward the