Pretending maternity

reply to post by OuttaHere


Thanks for sharing your experience with reborns. You should consider yourself very fortunate to be able to create such amazing dolls.

My intention with this thread is not judging but trying to understand the reasons beyond people wanting to have reborns.

When you go for a walk, how do people react to the fake baby? I’m referring to known people from you because obviously other people will not notice the difference.
And how does your husband react to you son/daughter’s replicas?
You don’t have to answer these questions if you feel they are too much personal. I was just curious.

Somehow I think that talking about certain subjects and understanding them make them seem less weird, although there are some points that I’m still not much convinced…

Thanks again to stop by and share your point of view.

Originally posted by danamoon
When you go for a walk, how do people react to the fake baby? I’m referring to known people from you because obviously other people will not notice the difference.
And how does your husband react to you son/daughter’s replicas?

Most people don't say anything, they smile as we pass by, and I assume they think the dolls are real babies. One or two people have come up to me and asked if I should really be allowing my young daughter to push a baby in a stroller, and then they talk to me and find out that they are really dolls. I carry business cards with me and give them to anyone who is curious, in case they want to order one.

When I finished my second doll, I put her in a Moses basket and brought it to church with me, all bundled up like a real baby. Many people came up to see whose baby I was carrying, only to find out it was a reborn doll. A small crowd gathered around me and the doll became a celebrity. She is so real that the church uses her every year in the our live nativity scene, because it is too cold to put a real baby in the manger for two hours, and nobody can tell the difference.

Many people I have met find reborn dolls creepy. They are just too real. My pastor said the sleeping reborns look like dead babies to him (he has done funerals for babies and he knows what they look like), except for the color of the reborn doll which looks, hopefully, more alive. But he doesn't like my dolls; they freak him out.

My husband thinks it is a huge waste of time and money, and he gets grumpy whenever I spend too much time working on my dolls. He gets pretty freaked out by the process, though, when there is a disembodied doll head on the counter. Or when I am poking holes in the doll's head, over and over, with a needle (to add hair), when I am baking baby arms, legs and heads in the oven to seal the paint, etc. Once I started sculpting the lips on an open eyed doll with no eyes installed. THAT freaked him out - the eyeless head seemed to stare at him and he didn't like it at all.

Here are a few links to my dolls. I have to say they are mediocre quality, not the $1500 dolls you will see on eBay. But I love them! And yes, they do fill a need, since I love babies and I can't have any more.

Here are a couple I've done:

Emily

Jonathan

Here is one I bought:

Jessica

Here are a few I own and plan to reborn:

Andrew

Katie

This is a manufacturer photo because currently my Madison is in pieces:

Madison

As you can see they are expensive, beautiful dolls even before the reborn process. These sell for a minimum of $350 once the process is complete. The problem is I love them so much it is hard to let them go.

[edited to add image links]

[edit on 11-11-2008 by OuttaHere]

Such an interesting thread! Thanks OP for posting it, and to all the contributors for your interesting commentary.

It's funny, I was just pondering creating a thread about how hard it is to find love in modern society, and here is a thread I feel is about the same thing - loneliness.

Other posters have said and I agree that for some these dolls seem to be a cruth to fill an emotional void. For our poster who shared her experience loving and making the dolls, it definitely didn't seem that way. But I can see how someone who feels isolated and lonely could latch on to a doll like this in an unhealthy way.

I can see how this could be a substitute for a real baby in today's world. At this point, two people have to work just to run a modern household. Who has the money for kids, let alone the time. I recently got married and everyone keeps asking when I'm having kids - as if!