On October 24, 2015, Finley Jay Lanning entered the world at 9 lbs, 0 oz. He was born into the loving arms of his parents and the hearts of his fans—people who knew his name and were waiting for him.

“FINALLY! Our finley is here! Welcome to the world baby!” one fan wrote on Twitter. “Finley is finally here and I’m so happy!” another commented.

Finley, now just two days old, is not the son of actors or pop stars or a royal family somewhere in Europe. His parents are Bryan and Melissa “Missy” Lanning of Murietta, California. They are YouTubers by trade.

“PREGNANCY TEST REACTION!”

Bryan and Missy are self-described God-fearing Christians who have been posting reality show-style videos about their family online every single day since 2012—videos that rack up hundreds of thousands of views, sometimes within hours. They collect ad revenue through Maker Studios, a YouTube creator network; they also sell merchandise emblazoned with the name of their YouTube channel, the “Daily Bumps.” (We reached out to the Lannings about how much they’re currently making and whether that will change with the introduction of YouTube Red; we’ll update if we hear back.)

The channel name comes from the title of Missy’s old blog, “The Bumps Along the Way,” but it also conveniently references Missy’s “baby bump,” which the couple has documented obsessively.

In March, Bryan and Missy—who worked respectively as a photographer and an “office worker” before their YouTube channel took off—announced that they were pregnant with their second baby. When Missy was just eight weeks along, the couple broke the news in a video titled “PREGNANCY TEST REACTION!”

In it, Bryan films as Missy prepares to take a pregnancy test in their hotel bathroom. “You gotta put your pee-pee on this thing right here,” he says.

The video garnered over two million views.

Its success was no accident—the Lannings have had plenty of practice marketing their ability to procreate. In 2013, Missy gave birth to the couple’s first child, Oliver. The Lannings played every moment of his gestation to the camera and have since thoroughly documented his young life for a legion of fans.

Now it’s little Finley’s turn.

“Honestly we could have had this baby days ago”

When Missy gave birth to Finley on Saturday, she was already 9 days past her due date. I know this because Bryan and Missy obsessively counted down the days until October 15 in their videos and on Twitter and Instagram, prompting many fans to be upset when Finn didn’t show up on time.

The fans might not have been so aggravated had the Lannings not fooled them many times before. When Missy was about eight months along, the Lannings began posting increasingly clickbaity videos with titles that suggested she had gone into labor when in fact she had not.

On August 29, they posted a video titled, “STRESSFUL EMERGENCY ROOM VISIT!” (Missy thought she was leaking amniotic fluid, but she actually just peed her pants.) Then on September 14, they informed their viewers that Missy was “COUNTING CONTRACTIONS.” (They were just Braxton-Hicks contractions.) On September 24, the Lannings posted that they were “OFFICIALLY ON BABY WATCH!”, but only on October 1 were they “PACKING THE HOSPITAL BAG.”

Each time, these videos racked up hundreds of thousands more views than the Daily Bumps’ average, and each time, they did not depict Missy going into true labor. When the Lannings posted “STARTED LABOR IN DISNEYLAND!” on October 10, viewers were ready to see a freakin’ baby.

But “STARTED LABOR IN DISNEYLAND!” only contains a few minutes of footage of the family leaving Disneyland because Missy was in pain. The video clocked in at 650,000 views. There was no baby.

The next day, after at least one fan stayed up all night to virtually witness Finley’s birth—

—Bryan took to Twitter to explain to viewers that Missy could have had the baby DAYS AGO...she just didn’t.

According to the Lannings, being “true to our audience” means taking every last stab at going viral. After the Disneyland birth that wasn’t, the couple posted several more fake-out videos in the remaining days of the pregnancy like, “CHECKING ON BABY!”, “WHERE’S BABY BROTHER?!”, “FINLEY’S DUE DATE!”, “I HOPE IT’S TODAY!”, “LABOR INDUCING CUPCAKE!”, and “THE BABY IS COMING!”

On October 22, Bryan teased the day’s video on Twitter by writing, “Missy had a long visit at the hospital and then we got a new family member!”

The new family member was a snail.

“Finley’s birth vlog is complete and I’m so proud of it”

After all that, fans were still excited to see Finley. And so the Lannings posted a 17-minute video of his birth on YouTube the day after he was born.

In it, viewers see Missy suffer contractions and cry when she learns she has to have a C-section. They see the exact moment Finley enters the world, goopy and screaming. They see Missy breastfeed him for the first time.

They also hear an original song by Bryan, who is an aspiring singer-songwriter. “Finley’s Lullaby” is available for purchase on iTunes.

“So blown away by what God is doing through YouTube ;)”

So what now? If their treatment of Oliver is any indication, the Lannings will start posting every moment of Finley’s young life for the fans. They’ll enjoy a bump in traffic for a few weeks that will eventually level off until they have another pregnancy they can film. This is the life cycle of the Christian family vlogger, where the best way to bring in views is to have a baby.

Bryan and Missy likely knew this secret to success before they ever posted a video on YouTube. In the first video Missy uploaded to the site in 2012, she admitted up front that she was “inspired” to start vlogging by watching other YouTubers document their pregnancies.

She also revealed that she once had a miscarriage when she was 10 weeks pregnant. Like Sam and Nia Rader, the popular Christian YouTubers spiraled out of control this summer (and who now say they are pregnant again), Missy discussed her struggle to stay pregnant openly on camera. That first video garnered over 80,000 views.

And now, three years later, the Lannings have found both reproductive and financial success.

Bryan considers it all a blessing from God himself.

Art by Jim Cooke. Contact the author at allie@gawker.com.