The newborn which is being cradled in the woman's palm is a doll, albeit an alarmingly lifelike one. Such a doll got an Australian owner into trouble, when she left it in the backseat of a car on a hot day. A passer-by in the old gold mining town in Gympie in Queensland was so alarmed to see the "unconscious baby" that the police were called in to smash the door window. The caller had noticed the unattended "baby" in the back of the car since 8am, and called the police just before midday, reported The Gympie Times. Police sergeant Peter Bailey said the doll was so lifelike, they treated the scene as an emergency situation. When police spoke to the owner of the car, she said she thought the doll looked good in the capsule and didn't consider the implications. These misunderstandings crop up all the time. Lifelike doll supplier Vynette Cernik said a woman once scolded her for tucking the doll under her arm on her shopping trip to buy it clothes. She recalled: "When I take the dolls out in public, people are always telling me to hold my baby properly. Even when I put the doll in the lady's hands, she kept saying, 'I don't believe it! I don't believe it!'."

When teaching her students the craft of creating these dolls, Mrs. Cernik will tell them about the windows of a brand new hummer that were smashed to retrieve what looked like a baby. People think they're real, so you need to be careful when you take them out in public. Nobody wants to be thought of as a bad mum mistreating her baby. A Scottish maker of these lifelike dolls said many of her customers were collectors or grandparents who miss their grandchildren, and even women who lost their babies. Ms Deborah King told the Daily Record that her business started out as a hobby. The 32-year-old mother-of-two from Edinburgh said: "My daughter wanted another sibling and I didn't want to have any more children, so I made her a doll instead." Her dolls, which can be fitted with electronic devices that mimic a heartbeat and breathing, are sold via her Reborn Baby website. They are painted several times to created the mottled color of newborn skin, have mohair hair and eyelashes and are weighted to make them feel as heavy as human babies. They are photographed in cots and dressed in frocks, some of which are described as "premature". Most have girls' names and are described as waiting for "adoption". She sells the dolls for between US$250 and US$1,600 and gets 10 to 15 requests a week.


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