CONCORD, N.H. – A Texas woman who suffocated her 6-year-old son in a motel room in New Hampshire last year and left his body along a road in Maine may shed light on her motives today, before being sentenced to 45 years in prison for second-degree murder.

After visiting her daughter in jail Wednesday, the mother of Julianne McCrery told The Associated Press that her daughter has prepared a statement. Lu Rae McCrery believes her daughter will read the statement rather than have someone else do it.

Julianne McCrery, 42, pleaded guilty in November to kneeling atop 6-year-old Camden Hughes as he lay face-down on their motel room floor. She told investigators that she covered his mouth with her hand as he flailed for several minutes.

McCrery told prosecutors that she had planned to kill herself, and that no one else was fit to raise Camden. But prosecutors said in November that they have evidence she felt Camden was an inconvenience.

“She set out on a journey with her son across the country while contemplating how she would kill him,” Senior Assistant Attorney General Susan Morrell said during the plea hearing.

The discovery of Camden’s body off a dirt road in South Berwick, Maine, on May 14 set off a nationwide effort to identify the boy. Meanwhile, McCrery called his elementary school in Irving, Texas, daily to report him absent with appendicitis.

McCrery was arrested at a truck stop in Massachusetts four days after Camden’s body was found. A motorist who had happened by the remote area of South Berwick was able to describe a pickup truck she had seen with a Navy insignia on a window. After police publicized the truck description, a passer-by saw the blue Toyota Tacoma at the truck stop and called police.

When questioned there, McCrery identified herself and told police she had killed her son at a motel in Hampton, then left his body under a green blanket by the side of the road.

During her plea hearing in November, McCrery answered the judge’s questions about her voluntary plea and her guilt over her son’s death, but she did not elaborate on the killing or her motives.

Lu Rae McCrery said she and other family members have not been able to talk with her daughter or her attorneys about the circumstances of Camden’s death.

“In retrospect, I think we would have all healed much faster if we could have,” she said Thursday.

Julianne McCrery’s lawyers did not return calls seeking comment.

Lu Rae McCrery said she arrived from Nebraska and visited with her daughter at the Rockingham County House of Corrections. The two were separated by a glass partition.

“It was surreal,” Lu Rae McCrery said. “We still can’t talk about the case until after Friday.”

Lu Rae McCrery said Julianne’s older son, who is on leave from the Navy, will attend the hearing along with her father and brother. All three visited at the jail Thursday, she said.

Asked if anyone would make a victim impact statement on Camden’s behalf, Lu Rae McCrery said, “What I’m going to say will encompass that.”

Seeing her daughter for the first time since the arrest left her numb, Lu Rae McCrery said.

“I just feel like I’m on a piece of driftwood in the sea,” she said.