Silvia spreads a blanket on the grass and gathers her two ‘little ones’ for a peaceful picnic in the park. To the casual observer, it may appear she’s a devoted mother or grandmother, carefully watching over her children – both no more than six months old – as they play.
But these children aren’t real.
They are hyper-realistic ‘reborn’ dolls that Silvia, 51, has spent hours painstakingly painting and assembling. Yet for her, these life-like dolls are more than just toys. They are her family.
‘I feel a special bond with my reborns. I change their nappies and their clothes, feed them, bathe them and like to take them out with us,’ explains Silvia, who has two adult daughters.
‘They usually travel in a buggy or baby carrier and I have a sticker for my car saying we have reborns on board.
‘With my daughters all grown up, reborn dolls help the memories of when they were babies come back. Just buying and changing their outfits gives me so much joy.’
Over the last decade, Silvia has spent £50,000 on making the dolls and loves to take her brood – which includes little Leah, Faith, Sebastian and Olly – on day trips, nurturing them with the same care and attention she would give to a real baby.
‘When I was first growing my reborn collection, my daughters would help me. We loaded up the car with buggies, baby carriers and a few toys before strapping a couple of reborns in. We took them to the beach, camping, to the cinema, horse-riding, roller skating or general sightseeing.
Proud Silvia Heszterenyiova with a reborn baby. Over the last decade, she has spent £50,000 on making the dolls
‘On holiday, I usually take one or two reborns with me and they sit with me on the plane.
‘They also occasionally join us for dinner in restaurants, depending on the occasion.’
The dolls are so convincing that passers-by often mistake them for real babies. ‘Once we were doing our weekly food shop when a woman walked past our trolley and smiled.
‘She said, ‘Ooh isn’t your little one lovely’ and when she reached out to touch it, her jaw dropped. She told me she thought it was a real baby and couldn’t believe the weight of it when she picked it up.
‘As she held it, rocking from side to side, it warmed my heart to see it giving her such joy.’
To many, her words may seem utterly baffling. But Silvia Heszterenyiova, who lives in Queensland, Australia, is far from alone in her love for these life-like dolls.
In recent years, reborn dolls – carefully crafted, life-size dolls that resemble human babies and toddlers – have become a growing trend worldwide, with women spending from £500 to £5,000 per doll.
The process of making reborns is known as reborning and the artists involved are called reborners. The dolls were first seen in the UK and US in the late Nineties, but the rise of social media has seen the reborn community spread online.
Two of Silvia’s lifelike dolls out at the park. Silvia uses photo albums to document their adventures
Shelly’s Reborn Dolls, based in Middlesbrough, has 67,000 Facebook followers. One reborn influencer, Maria Trigg from Florida, has three million followers on TikTok.
However, the dolls are not without controversy, with critics seeing them as quirky at best, sinister at worst.
Like Silvia, many treat the dolls like children – even procuring an ‘adoption’ or ‘birth’ certificate when purchasing one.
And as she once did with her own daughters Veronika and Sofia, now 31 and 27, Silvia loves to chart her reborns’ progress. ‘I bought a stack of photo albums and glued in pictures of their adventures. I stuck letters on the front covers to spell out their names and even went online to search for baby scans, which I printed off and added alongside the photos,’ she says. ‘I feel like the reborn doll is a part of your family and when taking them places and having adventures with them, it’s nice to have these photos in an album to remember them.’
Silvia’s fascination with reborn dolls began when she turned 40, a milestone that had her reflecting on the early years of motherhood.
‘When my daughters Veronika and Sofia were little, I relished every moment – changing their nappies, dressing them in cute outfits and rocking them to sleep,’ recalls Silvia. ‘As they grew up, I really missed doing all those things.’ Although she didn’t want another baby, Silvia, who is single, found herself yearning to experience that nurturing phase again – which gave her daughters, then aged 20 and 16, an idea for a birthday gift.
‘The doorbell rang but no one was there,’ Silvia says. ‘Then I looked down and saw a basket on the doorstep. I pulled the blanket back to reveal a little baby looking back at me, with tiny curled-up fingers, rosebud lips and plump cheeks.
‘There was a card with her name, Isabella, which read, ‘Will you take care of me?’ I fell in love with her straight away.’
Silvia’s wardrobe is filled with outfits for her reborn dolls
Isabella’s arrival gave Silvia the experience she craved of caring for an infant again. ‘That feeling of joy when I first got her was so strong because I had never seen or held such a lifelike doll. She was just so real.
‘As soon as I held Isabella, those new mum emotions I’d had when I held my daughters as babies came back,’ she recalls.
‘I will never forget that feeling. Also, because it was a surprise from my daughters, it was even more beautiful – them knowing how happy she would make me because they knew how much I love babies.
‘Of course, I can’t compare reborns to my own real children. We treated Isabella like a part of our family but always saw she was a doll and not real. I know that for other women who have lost a child or can’t have their own children, the bond must be stronger.’ Isabella’s arrival quickly saw a besotted Silvia keen to expand her new little family.
Looking on eBay, she was shocked to see how many dolls were for sale.
‘There were thousands of listings and I wanted them all,’ Silvia says. ‘I placed a few bids and was thrilled to win boy and girl twins. And that was it – I was hooked.’
As Silvia’s collection continued to grow – she now has more than 200 dolls – she decided to turn her hand to making her own, enrolling on a reborning course.
She loved the first doll she made, Sally, so much, that it even inspired a career change from her previous role as a carer.
The attention to detail is what makes the dolls so realistic: veins, tiny nails, subtle imperfections and rooting each strand of hair and eyelash using a needle
‘As I held the finished product, I knew I wanted to make reborns for a living so I started my own company called Fairies Reborn Magic Nursery,’ says Silvia, who says she loves sharing the joy she felt the first time she held a reborn doll with other women.
For Silvia, each doll is a labour of love. Working from a kit of body parts made from vinyl or silicone, she begins by priming, then layering paint on to the body parts and face, before carefully baking each layer to create the delicate mottled skin of a newborn.
The attention to detail is what makes the dolls so realistic: veins, tiny nails, subtle imperfections, and rooting each strand of hair and eyelash using a needle. Authentic reborns like the ones Silvia creates even mimic the weight of a real baby thanks to the plastic or glass beads filling their bodies. Their heads and limbs move like an infant’s.
To complete the illusion, Silvia crafts a personalised birth certificate for each doll.
‘It involves lots of careful painting and baking, over and over again,’ she laughs. ‘It brings a whole new meaning to having a baby or bun in the oven!
‘I tell my friends I am always reborn pregnant – constantly working on a new baby, either for a client or for myself. Even today when I create a new reborn doll, it’s beautiful and exciting and I can’t wait until I finish them to give her/him a name, hospital tag and haircut. It’s so amazing how they come alive with each day you work on them.’
Silvia explains that her customers often speak about their commissioned reborn dolls as though they are real babies.
‘Their eyes light up when talking about their reborn,’ she says.
‘It’s as though they are pregnant while I’m working on it. I love being able to bring their vision of a ‘newborn’ to life in a way that feels personal to them.
‘A lot of my customers who have sadly lost babies have asked me to create a replica to soothe their pain. Women who can’t conceive like to have reborns to give them a chance at motherhood, and there are also women whose children are grown up who want reborns that look like their kids when they were babies.
‘In these cases, I ask for details and photos to get everything just perfect, including their weight and length. Sometimes customers send me their babies’ actual hair to sew into the doll’s head.’
While many reborn fans echo Silvia’s sentiments about how their reborns have had a positive impact on their mental health, for others the stigma of ‘playing mummy’ to pretend babies means they prefer to keep their passion private, fearing ridicule.
For though the reborn community continues to grow, it hasn’t been without its critics – with online content sparking confusion, and even hate or disgust.
‘These dolls don’t provide therapy, their owners need therapy,’ one critic remarked, while others often describe the hobby as ‘weird’ or ‘creepy’.
Last year reborn influencer Maria Trigg, 36, went viral after sharing a TikTok video of her ‘en caul’ birth experience, featuring a silicone baby in an amniotic sac with a hyper-realistic silicone placenta and umbilical cord, prompting widespread dismay and discomfort.
Yet, despite some negative opinions, Silvia stands firm in her belief that reborns offer far more than people might first think.
‘Reborns bring so much happiness to many and can even save lives. I’ve heard several cases where reborns have prevented suicidal women taking their lives.’
Silvia adds that when she first started making reborns, she was working as a carer for the elderly, and discovered that when she handed reborn dolls to those with dementia, the dolls had a profound effect.
‘The reborns helped trigger old memories that the elderly women had long forgotten,’ she explains. ‘They gave them a sense of comfort that nothing else could.’
Silvia doesn’t plan to stop her new form of motherhood.
‘My daughters will always come first, but I have a special bond with my babies.’
Find Silvia on Facebook, Fairies Reborn Magic Nursery.