Ah, TikTok — the app where viral fame can come from lip-syncing to a trending sound or, in Whitney Leavitt’s case, dancing next to your sick baby in the NICU. Yeah, you read that right. Whitney, one of the MomTok stars, is known for a lot more than just being part of that messy swinging sex scandal. She’s the mom who sparked massive outrage when she filmed a cutesy dance video while — sorry had to make sure I was reading that right — her newborn was literally being given oxygen in the hospital.
If you’ve been living under a rock (or, you know, don’t have a TikTok account), MomTok is a chaotic corner of the internet for a group of Mormon mom influencers. The content creators rose to wild fame after Taylor Frankie Paul dropped a TikTok Live bombshell that revealed the whole “soft swinging” situation going down in their friend group. And while most of MomTok got wrapped up in that drama, Whitney Leavitt? She found her own way to get in trouble — by filming a TikTok while her baby was sick with RSV, a pretty serious respiratory virus.
*That* TikTok Mom Dancing Baby RSV Video
@nurse.lily Plz send love and prayers!! ♥️ P.S. we did this on our break 🙈 @Rachel #nightshiftnurse #nightshift #nursesoftiktok #nurselife #nurse #fyp #foryoupage ♬ original sound – WBL
In a now-infamous video, Whitney is seen doing a lighthearted TikTok dance next to her baby, Liam, as he lay in the NICU recovering from RSV. Background music? Oh, just Kendrick Lamar’s “Love,” a vibe not really matching the whole “my infant is on oxygen support” energy. The internet, as you can imagine, did not take kindly to it.
People slammed Whitney for using her son’s health crisis as a way to rack up views and engagement on TikTok. The optics of celebrating your kid’s recovery while simultaneously choreographing dance moves felt… off? Totally inappropriate? Absolutely insane? All of the above? Like, girl, maybe save the celebrations for after you’re not, you know, in the hospital?
Whitney Leavitt Responds To Claims Of “Clout-Chasing”
On The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (because of course there’s a Hulu show), Whitney actually addressed the controversy — and not just in a “Wow, I’m so misunderstood” kind of way. In the fourth episode, titled “The Book of Truth,” Whitney admitted that she’s still in pieces over the video while on a girls’ trip with the MomTok crew. The confession came during a game where the ladies were spilling the truth, and Whitney was real about the fact that she’s still getting dragged on TikTok for it.
Whitney, in all her vulnerability, confessed to being a little jealous of Taylor Frankie Paul. Not for the swinging sex scandal itself (thank God), but for the fact that Taylor somehow seemed to get forgiven by the internet for her whole bombshell. Whitney? Not so much.
“In that video, people felt like I was using my child’s sickness for clout and attention,” Whitney said after the clip played. She’s still dealing with trolls, mean comments, and overall hate from people who are mad about the NICU dance video.
But Demi Engemann, a fellow MomTok-er, later claimed that Whitney knew exactly what she was doing when she posted the RSV video. Apparently, during a ketamine therapy session (because Utah, right?), Whitney allegedly admitted that she did film the whole thing for clout.
“After many months and days of therapy, no, I did not make that video for clout at all,” Whitney told Decider. “You could be processing something else under that drug and then you’re just spitting out all of these things. So [for Demi] to have filmed that and to have kept that and to have stated that to everyone else in such a personal, intimate moment was very hurtful.”
