In a TV show titled Servant, which is the centre show of the hit channel Apple TV plus, you might think that a baby shower on the opening credits scene is not much of an obscure thing but then a woman leans over the crib which has been dimly lit up with a white chair and a wooden horse. Then the doorbell was rung by a person who was appointed to be the nanny. But as time passes and the show keeps going viewers find out that Dorothy’s baby passed away when he was 13 weeks old and what she has been carrying all this time was reborn which looked like a real child made after an infant.
It is not a new concept or an idea formed up which consisted of a doll that looked so much realistic like an infant which are known as reborn and they are well known within the community. These Reborn dolls – often bought online from stores like Zen Reborn – are also being collected by a vibrant group of artists and enthusiasts for quite a time.
There is a whole community of people on YouTube who collect and share unboxing videos of the Reborn dolls as well as those people who do influencer style home videos. In one of those videos which are titled “ reborn Iyla’s morning routine, “ a woman changes the doll’s diaper and then shows off her accessories, which also consisted of a fully stocked caddy. The disclaimer of that particular video contains “ I know that these dolls are not real “ is being shown at the beginning of the video and it also contained that “ this is just role-playing on camera for fun and entertainment”.
There are a lot of people who seek this kind of video where the creators show off what all the things they can do with a reborn or the dolls that look as much as close to an infant. The dolls are like any other collector’s item, the only thing is that people always don’t purchase them for the artistic value that they might possess. In other words, people might purchase them as showed in the tv series servant many are drawn to the therapeutic benefits that it might provide such as when elders are suffering from cognitive decline or for a woman who has gone a miscarriage and stillbirths and even those who cannot or will not give birth, due to some biological or psychological challenges. For these kinds of people, a reborn might be less of a doll and more of a pet or maybe even like an actual child. This is a kind of reality that they are aware of and still accept which the society on the outside might not fully understand.
Some may make the argument that many well-made dolls do resemble a lot like actual babies because some of the reports might be that convincing as the people who make them consider themselves as artists which they are as they spend their time perfecting this doll, in a few cases the dolls might be so perfect that they might pass a real newborn.
In May 2016 a new Hampshire police officer broke down the window of a car to rescue a child inside which turned out to be a reborn “I went to put my finger in its mouth and it was all resistance” as he thought the way he did because the reborn was draped inside of a blanket and a bottle of milk was up against its mouth. It looked and felt like a baby so at the moment he did consider it as a living child. To the person who owned it was a baby and also to the many different people who own them. After research, it was found out that this reborn belonged to a woman named Carollyne Seiffert, who started collecting these Reborn dolls as a way to cope with the death of her son. The particular doll that was found in the car wan only one of the 40 Reborn dolls that she had owned. When asked she said that everyone has a unique way oh handling the losses that they suffer and this was her way.
Mental health experts say that there is a similar emotional connection between a reborn doll and a person which can be very useful in a lot of cases, such as if a person a in the grievance of a child they had lost in the past or in a case where they are not able to have a child at all. For some woman the fantasy of a baby is powerful or in other words, being a mother can mean a lot to them and having a reborn allows them to indulge in this fantasy more powerfully. For them to be able to treat those reborn like a real child and nurture them and treat them like an actual child allows them to experience the feeling of motherhood which they may not experience if not for this. During these moments they will feel contentment that eludes them in real life.
Even in high schools around the world, the teenagers are handed an electronic doll to be cared for a day or two, to expose them to the challenges of parenting for a day or two. This is done to reduce teen pregnancy with the help of these infant simulators. The infant simulator is a doll that cries when it needs to be fed, burped or rocked or changed. It electronically calculates the time to cry and the time to be fed and general care. So you can see that this is where the idea for the therapeutic help for the mothers resembled the Reborn dolls in such a way that helps them even if the method might feel a little out of the box but it helps those who are grieving.