Whitney Leavitt's 2021 TikTok of Her Dancing to Her Son's RSV Battle Still Haunts Her
"People felt like I was using my child's sickness for clout and attention," Whitney shared on 'The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.'
Published Sept. 6 2024, 12:00 a.m. ET
After #MomTok survived the swinging sex scandal, the group of Mormon mom influencers are ready to move forward with their lives and are doing so on reality TV. However, as their Hulu show, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, progressed, the group revealed more controversial moments that still haunt them today.
Whitney Leavitt, for instance, has much going on besides being associated with MomTok after Taylor Frankie Paul's salacious confession.
The season followed Whitney as she returned from Utah after fleeing to Hawaii with her husband, Connor, and their two children. Her getaway came after Connor's Tinder cheating scandal on Reddit in 2022. Additionally, Whitney herself was in hot water by the court of public opinion after dancing on TikTok while discussing her son's terrifying prognosis.
Whitney Leavitt sparked outrage on TikTok after creating a "fun" dance video to her son's RSV recovery.
Whitney briefly addressed her TikTok scandal during Season 1, Ep. 4 of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. While on a girls' trip with the rest of MomTok — Taylor Frankie Paul, Demi Engemann, Layla Taylor, Mayci Neeley, Jennifer Affleck, Mikayla Matthews, and Jessi Ngatikaura — for Mayci's birthday, Whitney admitted her RSV video she posted on TikTok in 2021 still receives harsh feedback today.
After her friends paused and glared at one another after she mentioned the video, the mother of two shared in a confessional interview that her son, Liam, had been diagnosed with RSV two weeks after she had given birth in 2021. RSV is a common respiratory condition for which some infants need oxygen via a nasal cannula.
Whitney said they found out Liam had RSV after her husband took him to the pediatrician
"The doctor's testing his oxygen levels, and the doctor's telling us, 'these oxygen levels are scarcely low, and you need to take him to the emergency room,'" she shared in the confessional. "So Connor rushed him to the emergency room." Whitney said the first few days of Liam being in the hospital were "really scary," but he eventually began feeling better.
She celebrated his recovery by posting a video of her dancing beside Liam's hospital bed to Kendrick Lamar's "Love" playing in the background. The video was slammed on TikTok and other social media apps such as X (formerly Twitter), as many felt Whitney used the situation to gain more TikTok views.
"In that video, people felt like I was using my child's sickness for clout and attention," Whitney said after a clip of the video played.
Demi Engemann said Whitney admitted to creating the RSV TikTok for clout while high on ketamine.
During the group's truth-telling game on their girls' trip, Whitney said she still gets "shredded to pieces" on TikTok years after her RSV video went viral. She said the backlash made her "jealous" of Taylor.
When asked by the group if she's jealous of Taylor's "clout," Whitney said she was only jealous of how she felt Taylor had been forgiven online for unveiling MomTok's swinging sex scandal on TikTok Live in 2022. Taylor, however, emphatically disagreed with Whitney's assessment and said she still gets bullied and death threats from the scandal.
While Whitney seemed to be still upset about the attention she received from the RSV video, Demi later revealed that her frenemy definitely knew what she was doing. Demi told some of the MomTok members that Whitney confessed to using Liam's RSV for clout. She claimed the reveal happened when they did ketamine infusion therapy together.
According to MindBloom, ketamine causes a "dissociative and psychedelic experience" that can make those who take it high. Demi said the experience loosened Whitney to tell the truth about the video. However, Whitney has never admitted to lying about the video.
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is available to stream on Hulu.
