At first glance, the newborn appears to be sleeping. He lies tummy-down on a white blanket, legs tucked under a bulky diaper, eyes shut and mouth agape. A pair of teddy bears stand sentry over his small body.

But a closer look at the photograph reveals the horrible truth: The baby is dead, his skin discolored by imminent decay.

The picture is one of hundreds of stillborn and miscarried babies that bereaved parents have posted on the Internet in virtual memorials for children they say were "born angels."

And while some Web surfers find the images of dead babies disturbing, the parents say the websites help them cope with their devastating loss.

"Anyone who's had a new baby can show him off. We can't. This is the only way we can show the world that he existed," said Tina Taylor, a Georgia housewife who lost her infant boy at 36 weeks after a knot formed in the umbilical cord, cutting off his maternal lifeline. "I wanted to show him off. I think he's beautiful."

Her site, which is representative of the virtual memorials, features photographs, the story of what went wrong and poems and letters dedicated to the infant whom she says was "perfect in every way except he had no heart beat."

The Taylors spent eight hours with Jeremy, snapping dozens of the shots of their son in different poses and making plaster molds of his face, hands and feet, before reluctantly turning him over to the funeral home.

As the day progressed, his skin started to deteriorate and his lips turned black, so Taylor used Adobe Photoshop to lighten the pictures and to depict Jeremy with angel wings and in the cowboy outfit that is traditionally donned by newborn boys in her family.

"It was kind of healing for me to be doing something that was dedicated to him, since I wasn't able to have him with me," Taylor said. "A lot of these people (making virtual memorials) need validation that this person existed, and you don't get that when you go to the hospital and you're the only one that saw the baby. It's a very healing experience."

Her site, which is included in several infant memorial Web rings, has allowed her to meet and commiserate with other parents who have experienced a similar loss.

Parents whose babies die in utero often spend time with the infant and take pictures to keep as private mementos or to share with loved ones or members of grief support groups, said Cathi Lammert, the executive director of SHARE, a national organization formed in 1977 to help parents deal with infant loss.

Hospitals frequently give a "memory box" to parents whose babies die, which includes items such as a lock of the baby's hair, the hospital bracelet, footprints and photographs. Lammert said that parents are increasingly sharing these mementos with others over the Internet, including on SHARE's site.

"What's been done in support groups for years is now happening online," said Lammert, a registered nurse who counsels grieving parents at the St. Joseph Health Center in St. Charles, Missouri. "It's just a new way of communicating and sharing their baby with others."

Grieving parents also want the world to recognize that the baby, although dead, was indeed a person, said Barb Sitarski, a Michigan bereavement counselor/nurse and the webmistress for Mending Broken Hearts, another nonprofit group dedicated to infant loss.

"I think the reason pictures and mementos are so important to parents is that society so quickly wants the parents to 'get over it,'" said Sitarski. "They do not realize that parents won't forget, that they carry the memory of the child in their hearts forever."

Some of pictures are more disquieting than others, such as the pictures of a fetus that had been dead in the womb for several days or of a fetus delivered at 22 weeks.

That's the reason Kimberly Grimme only posted the ultrasound images of a baby girl – a twin – that she lost at 29 weeks. Her obstetrician warned her that the baby –- which had been dead for a week when it was delivered along with its healthy twin -– would be deteriorated and she opted not to see it or have pictures taken.

"I told him I didn't want to see anything disgusting," Grimme said. "But afterwards I regretted not seeing her. I should have done it to put my mind at ease. Here it is two years later, and I'm still wondering what she was like."

Tammy Novak, who runs Angel Babies Forever Loved, says parents who experience a pregnancy that ends in death tend to seek each other out online.

"It's kind of an elite club that you never want to join," said Novak, who delivered two stillborn sons.

Confronted with the parent's loss, many people say the wrong things, such as telling them they can always "try again," she said. Novak created her site in 1998 after losing her first son. She found there was scant information about infant loss available online and start compiling resources. Today, the site features a chat room, articles, a message board, memorial pages and a newsletter that goes out to 500 people.

Novak acknowledged that some might find the pictures she posts on her site "morbid." One of her friends took her memorial offline when she was flamed by people who found the pictures objectionable, and another friend's site was erased by hackers, she said. Other parents have had their tributes linked by satire sites such as the Portal of Evil.

She has little patience for people who criticize the infant memorials.

"If you don't agree with them, just stay away. Go on and don't read it," she advised. "We're a private community."