EATON: Here’s what happened when our pregnancy announcement went viral

Three years ago yesterday, my wife and I were on our way to see “Wicked” in Richmond, Virginia, to celebrate our wedding anniversary.

My phone buzzed and on the screen was a New York City number.

“Hi, this is Will from ‘Good Morning America,'” the caller said. “We saw your pregnancy announcement video and want to feature it on tomorrow’s show. Can I ask you a few questions?”

I laughed because the video he referred to was supposed to be for just family and friends.

Weeks earlier, my wife, Erica, and I were shocked to learn we were expecting another baby just nine months after having our first child, Emerson. We announced Erica’s first pregnancy with a spoof TV breaking news report and decided to have some fun with the second announcement.

THE EATON’S FIRST BABY ANNOUNCEMENT VIDEO

We changed the words to Taylor Swift’s hit “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” to “We Are Having, Having Another Baby,” recorded our own out-of-tune version of the song and then shot a music video with our iPhone cameras.

We quickly edited the video and posted it on our Facebook pages. Our friends started to share it and a few hours later, the digital editor at my TV station asked if she could post it on the station’s Facebook page.

WATCH: THE EATON BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT VIDEO THAT WENT VIRAL

I agreed … and then things went crazy.

A producer with the TODAY show called Erica and The Huffington Post, Daily Mail, Deseret News and dozens of other news outlets wrote stories about the video. Meanwhile, the number of views continued to climb.

Erica and I were bombarded with messages from people all over the world congratulating us and complimenting the video. Most of the comments were very kind – but some were downright nasty.

A popular radio “shock jock” played the video on his show and laughed at us while mocking our singing and our clothes while sharing his reasons on why we should use birth control.

He posted the video on his Facebook page with the phrase, “A birth announcement so bad you have to see it to believe it.” Word to the wise: Never read the comments on a post like that.

A writer for a popular mommy-blog shared her opinion on the announcement:

It’s as if the gates of hell opened up this week and Satan herself sent a video upon the land. And that video contained a Taylor Swift song parodied by parents expecting an “oops” baby. Now I know what video to play if I ever decide to torture someone. Parents who make parody videos make the rest of us look bad.

Ouch.

The next day, “Good Morning America” ran the story and, after listening to our singing, anchor Dan Harris said, “A great case for auto tune.” The other anchors laughed hysterically.

BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT ON “GOOD MORNING AMERICA” AND “THE TODAY SHOW”

We thought it was funny too and, to his credit, Dan apologized on Twitter and sent us a signed copy of his book “10% Happier.”

THIS MAN IS A GOOD SPORT! MT @n8eaton: We will gladly take you up on your flowers/singing lessons offer 🙂 @GMA

— Dan Harris (@danbharris) April 25, 2014

The ironic thing about all of this is that if we had known the video was going to go viral, we would have done a much better job with the singing, filming, editing – everything! This was a video meant for a family and friends – not millions of people around the world.

After a few days, the hype calmed down and life returned to normal. Months later a producer with the Comedy Central show Tosh.0 called and asked if we would appear in the program’s “Web Redemption” segment. It would have been fun but we were days away from moving to Idaho and the timing didn’t work out.

Three years later, Erica and I still talk about making a follow-up music video. It’d be about life with two toddlers – you know, grocery store meltdowns, hour-long bedtime routines, arguments over toys, etc. It might go viral … but who knows?