An expectant East Texas couple has drawn attention from around the globe with a Facebook page they created for their unborn child as a fun and convenient way to keep family and friends posted on their coming addition.
Ellie Greene said she thought it would be the most efficient way to keep her family back in Scotland updated on her pregnancy with Marriah, as she and husband Matt Greene have named their daughter-to-be.
"I said, `We don't have to be in their face. Let's just let Marriah tell them,"' she told the Tyler Courier-Times-Telegraph for Sunday's editions.
Speaking as Marriah, the Greenes would post such messages as "I kept my mom up all night" and "Woohoo! I kicked the remote off my mom's belly."
Within the first couple of days the page was up, Marriah had drawn 110 friends. "That was a joke. She had more friends than I do," Matt Greene said.
After the page made into local and national news outlets, the number of friend requests skyrocketed to more than 800.
Then Facebook shut down the page, because it had been created in the name of someone who had not yet moved from the realm of the fictitious to the factual.
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"All day that day, we kept getting ... personal messages saying, `We miss her page. You didn't do anything wrong,"' said the mother-to-be.
So the couple created a new group page on Facebook, which has drawn hits from such far reaches of the globe as India and Belgium. Messages in a variety of languages have been posted, many directed to Marriah.
"Marriah, your such a sweep lil girl that has brought complete strangers from across the globe together," said one message, "and I wonder when you get here how many more lives you will touch. Someone upstairs has a great plan for you."
Ellie Greene is scheduled to deliver Thursday, and she and Matt plan to print out an online journal from Facebook to put in Marriah's baby book if the postings stay "good, clean and innocent," she said.
"I guess when she turns 13, she can have her own Facebook page," she said.
