A mom who went viral on TikTok for dancing next to her newborn as he received supplemental oxygen in a hospital was shocked when she received death threats over the content.
“I would say the mistake I made was not giving enough context of the situation,” the 28-year-old mom of two, Whitney Leavitt shared with BuzzFeed News.
RELATED: John Mayer Addresses Death Threats From A Taylor Swift Fan Following Rerelease Of ‘Red’
Leavitt said she posted the video just to share her son’s health condition. The captions revealed that her son Liam had been diagnosed with RSV, which is a common respiratory condition for which some infants need to receive oxygen via a nasal cannula.
In the clip, Leavitt dances next to her son as Kendrick Lamar‘s “Love” plays. Many people were outraged over the clip as it quickly went viral.
“It was really bad, people were telling me to end my life, they wished my family would die,” said Leavitt, who took down the video following the hate messages.
She found out about the backlash on her second day in the hospital.
“I felt like I had completely lost control to clear up the context of everything of why I made the video and the reason of what motivated me to make the video and I feel like people completely took it out of context,” Leavitt said.
RELATED: Mom Sent Texts Threatening To Kill Baby And Herself Before 6-Month-Old Hot Car Death
She added that the reason she made the video was because people were asking about his condition while Liam was in the hospital and all her videos involve dancing.
“Dancing and having captions answering a comment is in line with content I’ve always created,” she said.
Leavitt’s husband called her to urge her to take the video down.
“He was like, ‘I think we need to take it down,’ and it wasn’t until that point that I looked it up and it had gone everywhere,” she said.
Like many people, the mom began posting due to the pandemic. It began with her posting relatable mom content and memes. And then, when she got pregnant with her second child, Leavitt decided to start dancing again.
“I don’t know why I didn’t do this from the beginning because I enjoy it so much,” she said.
Leavitt danced at a competitive studio for years and then stopped when she became pregnant with her first child. She revealed that her second pregnancy was great and much different than the first one, which she found very hard. “
“I wonder if dancing maybe helped — brought up my spirit,” she added. Thankfully, Liam is now doing great and doesn’t need oxygen support.
“He’s awesome. He’s healthy. He’s sleeping horribly. But other than that, he’s doing great,” Leavitt said.