Credit: SWNS
Meet the couple who are 'mum' and 'dad' to 13 fake babies - and change their nappies, take them out in a pram and say it is preparing them for parenthood.
Jess Ellis, 27, started collecting reborn dolls - realistic dolls modelled on infants - in May 2020 after feeling "lonely" during the pandemic and coming across them online.
She bought her first doll, Rebecca, a one-month-old baby girl, for £250 to keep her company and became obsessed growing her brood.
Next came Sam, a newborn, for £560 in November 2020 - followed by June, a one-month-old, Sam, a newborn, Brooklyn, an eight-month-old, Manuela, a newborn, Zain, a three-month-old, Lilly, a newborn, Annalese, a newborn, Aria, a newborn, Cookie, who is premature, Charlie, a one-year-old, Pippa, also one, and June, four.
Meet the couple who are 'mum' and 'dad' to 13 fake babies - and change their nappies, take them out in a pram and say it is preparing them for parenthood.
Jess Ellis, 27, started collecting reborn dolls - realistic dolls modelled on infants - in May 2020 after feeling "lonely" during the pandemic and coming across them online.
She bought her first doll, Rebecca, a one-month-old baby girl, for £250 to keep her company and became obsessed growing her brood.
Next came Sam, a newborn, for £560 in November 2020 - followed by June, a one-month-old, Sam, a newborn, Brooklyn, an eight-month-old, Manuela, a newborn, Zain, a three-month-old, Lilly, a newborn, Annalese, a newborn, Aria, a newborn, Cookie, who is premature, Charlie, a one-year-old, Pippa, also one, and June, four.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi, I am Jess and I collect reborn babies and at the moment I have around 13 in my collection.
00:13So I got into reborns because I've always loved dolls my whole life and everyone else
00:19kind of seemed to grow out of them and I never did. And then during the pandemic, I got really,
00:24really lonely. I was spending maybe 10 hours of the day on my own, which I have never done
00:29in my entire life. I really loved taking photos of them and I wanted to share them with more
00:36people. So I made myself an Instagram account dedicated just to the dolls, really liked
00:43it and then thought, oh, I'll try TikTok as well, because that's all the rage. Within
00:47a month, I had a viral video which had 26 million views, which was very overwhelming
00:52and I very quickly got a couple of hundred thousand followers. People seem to really
00:56enjoy seeing the dolls and I really, really enjoy sharing them and just educating people
01:02about them, really. I do have a couple here that I have made and these are ones that I
01:08bought the kits for and then painted them and weighted them and stuffed them and made
01:14them look realistic. What I do try and do is sell mine fairly cheaply if I can, because
01:18this is just a hobby for me. I'm not looking to make huge amounts of money from it. I only
01:23make a couple of them per month, maybe one or two, and this is just because obviously
01:27I have a full-time job, so I can't make them full-time. But it is really, really fun and
01:32I really enjoy being creative with them and it's just a way to express an art form, really.
01:38I've given myself a bit of a limit, although having said that, every time I make a limit,
01:44I then seem to go past the limit. I thought my limit would be five and then ten and now
01:49I'm obviously on more than that. At the moment, because I don't have a huge amount more space,
01:55if I buy one I'm trying to sell one on, so that I keep a general level of the same, but
02:01sometimes you just come across a doll and fall in love with it and that's happened several
02:05times this year already and I couldn't say no and so they did have to join my collection.
02:11Everything I do with my dolls I usually film, because I really enjoy creating content. So
02:17a lot of the time I will change their clothes, so I do change them. It tends to be my newer
02:23ones that get changed more often and I find that quite a bonding experience with them,
02:28which sounds very weird to say, but then when I started buying them and started interacting
02:33with them, I could definitely see how you can become very attached to them. I like taking
02:40them out in the pram for a walk, which is a good way for me to get out of the house
02:44because I predominantly work from home. And they're very comforting to hold, so any time
02:50we watch a scary movie, I will be holding a doll. We don't watch scary movies about
02:55dolls, other than that I will sometimes take them out into the garden with me if I'm reading,
03:02just because it's nice to hold. They are weighted to feel like a real baby.