For years, Lacey Spears shared on her blog and on social media the heartbreaking tale of her blond-haired, blue-eyed boy's constant battle with illness.

The 26-year-old from New York state appeared to be a doting mother, who wrote of her five-year-old son Garnett's many trips to the hospital and his constant struggle with ill health. She praised the courage of the boy she dubbed on her blog "Garnett and Great".

Lacey Spears and her son, Garnett, whose courage she praised on her blog.

In January this year, after years of chronicling Garnett's life online, the single mother posted on her Facebook page agonising photographs of her desperately ill son lying in a hospital bed. A short time later, the little boy fell into a coma and died from what doctors said was acute sodium poisoning.

On Tuesday, after a police investigation that took months, Ms Spears appeared in a New York court and was formally charged over Garnett's death.