Their ancestors came to Oregon in covered wagons. 
 
 They filmed their pregnancy announcement in a car. 
 
 More than 600,000 people have watched the Meeks' announcement, which the Happy Valley couple rapped to the tune of "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" and posted on YouTube Easter Sunday. 
 
 The soon-to-be father is among the last descendants to carry Joseph Lafayette Meek's name. 
 
 The Oregon Territory pioneer in the 1800s was born in Washington County, Virginia, in 1810. He settled down in what is now Hillsboro, in Oregon's Washington County. Once a prominent fur trader, Meek advocated for the provisional government of Oregon Territory as a sheriff and legislator in the 1840s. He married the daughter of a Nez Perce chief, according to PBS. 
 
 His great-great-grandson, Jesse Joseph Lafayette Meek, goes by his first and last names: Jesse Meek. 
 
 Jesse Meek, 31, grew up in Happy Valley. He works as a personal trainer and corrective exercise therapist and coaches martial arts. His wife, Melissa Meek, 28, grew up in Oregon City. She's a finance specialist. 
 
 The 21st-century Meeks announced their pregnancy on YouTube last Sunday, April 5, using an abridged version of the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" theme song. 
 
 It was mostly her idea, he said. 
 
 "We love to do that kind of stuff," Jesse Meek said. "We consider ourselves goofy and fun." 
 
 After church on Easter, Jesse and Melissa Meek headed to her parents' house for dinner. 
 
 Melissa sat in the passenger seat, sporting a white trucker hat over her straight blonde hair. Jesse drove. His hat was black, but his sunglasses were white. They both wore green shirts. Unlike Will Smith, they never flipped their bills. 
 
 Jesse taped his phone to the dashboard, with the camera facing himself and his wife. They only had a few minutes to do this. 
 
 "In Happy Valley, Oregon, livin' it wed, bought our first house and started to build our homestead," Melissa rapped. "Our family and friends, who were up to no good, started asking questions about my parenthood." 
 
 The two alternated lines. 
 
 "Little did they know the plan had begun to start our own family, and man, it was fun," Jesse sang. 
 
 They thought at most, a couple hundred of their close friends and family would see the video. 
 
 After four days, the video surpassed 2,000 views. Since then, Jesse Meek has watched it spiral out of control. Between Friday and Saturday, it jumped to 100,000. 
 
 As of Monday evening, the Meeks' baby announcement had more than 600,000 views. 
 
 "It has been a lot of fun, but definitely way more than we ever expected," Jesse Meek said Monday. 
 
 The song wasn't the first unusual tool the couple used to tell people they would soon be parents. 
 
 When Melissa told her husband she was pregnant, she didn't use words. She used their dog. 
 
 To Kadence, a boxer, she attached a tag that hinted their family would grow in 9 months. 
 
 She filmed Jesse's reaction. 
 
 They told both of their parents in the same way. After the "Fresh Prince" announcement went viral, the couple decided to upload a video including all three dog-tag tellings to YouTube as well. 
 
 The pregnancy announcements are just the latest in a series of surprises that have dotted the couple's nine-year relationship. 
 
 "My wife is super creative," Meek said. "We both try to constantly top each other." 
 
 When Meek proposed to Melissa Herman, it was in front of about 2,500 people at a martial arts tournament. 
 
 The Meeks will celebrate their two-year wedding anniversary next month, on May 11. 
 
 That's around the time the couple is supposed to learn the sex of their child, Meek said. It's also close to Mother's Day. And they want to reveal whether it's a boy or a girl in another creative format, he said. 
 
 Will the Meeks preserve Joseph Lafayette's name if they have a son? 
 
 "We haven't [discussed that] yet really," Meek said. "That would be very cool. We're definitely mixing in the family heritage and the name." 
 
 -- Hannah Leone 
 
 hleone@oregonian.com 
 
 503-294-4001; @HannahMLeone ||||| Published on Apr 13, 2015 
 
 Before there the was the fresh Prince pregnancy announcement to the world there was the announcement to Jesse meek and our parents. With the help of our boxer Melissa surprised us all! ||||| A proud Carmichael father unknowingly used Facebook Live Monday to publicly stream his son’s birth. 
 
 When Kali Kanongata-a decided to record the birth of his son for relatives on his Facebook page, he didn’t realize strangers were about to tune in. 
 
 “I didn't notice it was on the public feed until someone said ‘Push, Push’ and it was my little cousin,” Kanongata-a said. 
 
 Comments started popping up on the live video, but Kanongata-a kept rolling. 
 
 "I thought he was just filming regular and he put it on live and I didn't know until the end so yeah, I was surprised," said the mother, Sarah Dome. 
 
 Dome said she realized her birth had gone viral when Facebook reached out to Kanongata-a about the thousands of views. 
 
 "The Facebook people sent him a message that there's over 2,000 hits and, yeah, that's how I found out,” Dome said. 
 
 In just one day, the video's been viewed more than 150,000 times and even became a topic on the "Today Show." 
 
 "I know there's some people that say ‘Oh that's too much,’ but I think it's not really that bad,” Dome said. "Everyone can have their opinion (but) to me, it's beautiful. It's a blessing." 
 
 "I don't think it's fair to cast judgment upon people. I mean, birth is a wonderful thing,” Kanongata-a said. 
 
 Dome said she hasn't watched the whole 45-minute clip yet. 
 
 "I've been with the baby, but I went to the end to make sure he didn't show too much and I thought 'Oh, this isn't too bad,'” she said. 
 
 "We're encouraging her to push and that she can do it and that she's capable,” Kanongata-a said. 
 
 Dome hopes other women who see the video feel they're also capable with their own bodies. 
 
 “It shows mothers it's not hard to have a baby. It’s not so much pain -- I mean there is pain but you can do it and don't be ashamed. I'm not ashamed," she said. 
 
 APP USERS: Tap here to view the video 
 
 KCRA 3's Devon Armijo and Natalie Brunell contributed to this story. ||||| Get the latest from TODAY Sign up for our newsletter 
 
 / Source: TODAY Contributor By Allison Slater Tate 
 
 “Do you have a minute? I’ve got kind of a long story,” wrote Dan Majesky of Cincinnati, Ohio, on his Facebook page May 20 under the picture of an ultrasound. Majesky, 37, went on to announce that he and his wife, Leah, 36, are expecting a baby girl after years of struggling with infertility. 
 
 Majesky said that when it came time to announce Leah’s pregnancy to friends and family, he chose to tell their entire emotional journey, including a heartbreaking miscarriage. “I wanted to write a little more about what we had been through on the way to that announcement,” he told TODAY Parents. “Especially regarding the miscarriage, because neither of us wanted that to go unremarked upon. That was a hard time for us — a lonely time — but that baby left a permanent mark on us, and it didn't seem fair that it would get hidden away.” 
 
 Initially, Majesky said, they didn’t intend to share their story beyond their circle of friends. “We had been doing this thing in secret for three-plus years, and wanted to let them know what was happening with us,” said Majesky. “After a few people asked to be able to share it with someone who they thought would benefit from reading it, we made it public.” 
 
 The post has now been liked on Facebook more than 31,000 times. “The response has been as overwhelming as it was unexpected. We're both humbled,” he said. 
 
 Leah and Dan Majesky Dan Majesky 
 
 In the comments on the post and in private messages to the couple, the Majeskys are learning they are far from alone. “We’ve gotten a pile of messages of encouragement, but also a lot of people sharing their stories with us, some of whom have never shared their stories before,” said Majesky. “People have gone on much longer, much tougher journeys than we have. I feel a bit like a pretender in the face of what we have not dealt with, but not a single person has degraded our experience in any way. If anything, people who are also doing this, experiencing this, seem to want to lift other people up to their level. There's really a spirit of being all in this together.” 
 
 The Majeskys have been together for eight years, married for three. Both say that their struggle to have a child has shaped their marriage, and not just in challenging ways. 
 
 “We've always tried to be honest and communicate our feelings to each other, and when you're at a really low point, and your partner is at a really low point, and you continue to share those feelings rather than hide them away to be a rock for the other person, that's when the partnership really solidifies,” said Majesky. “Neither of us tried to be life-raft for the other, and neither of us drifted away, maybe because she pulled me back, or I pulled her back in, but we hung on to each other, and we survived. And we thrived.” 
 
 Majesky said he believes that discussing infertility in the open more often would help support couples going through it. “We'd like to think this is a rarity, but the doctor's office was always full. As much as the doctor might tell you ‘This is normal,’ since people don't talk about it — for whatever reason, sadness, embarrassment — it still feels abnormal because it's hidden away in private message boards and specific support groups, and not openly discussed,” he said. 
 
 The couple said they are not sure if they will continue to provide updates on their pregnancy publicly, but they know now that a great number of people are invested in knowing the ending to their story in about 25 weeks.
– Four days after Jesse and Melissa Meek posted their pregnancy announcement on YouTube on Easter Sunday, it had about 2,000 views. By Saturday, it hit 100,000; by Monday, 600,000. Currently, it's sitting pretty at more than 3 million views. Why? Because the Oregon couple decided to announce by writing their own lyrics to the Fresh Prince theme song. Sample line: "Our family and friends, who were up to no good, started asking questions about parenthood ... Little did they know the plan had begun to start our own family, and man, it was fun." The video was intended for friends and family members, and "that was the last thing we thought would happen, that it would blow up to what it had, or what it has," Melissa, 28, tells KPTV. "We love to do that kind of stuff," Jesse, 31, tells the Oregonian. "We consider ourselves goofy and fun." They filmed the video while en route to Melissa's parents' house for Easter dinner, in just five takes. Since it went viral, they've uploaded two more videos to YouTube: One of Melissa using the couple's dog to break the pregnancy news to Jesse (and then the couple also using the dog to tell the grandparents-to-be), and one of Jesse proposing to Melissa at a jiu-jitsu tournament. They celebrate their two-year wedding anniversary May 11, and will learn their baby's gender around the same time—another piece of news they plan to reveal creatively, Jesse says.