Are you ready to have your mind boggled, your heartstrings plucked and your gag reflex stimulated all at the same time?
TV Scoop flagged up the Channel 4 documentary My Fake Baby, about realistic "newborn" baby dolls and the women who collect them.
Now we have a similar clip from the US - about women who mother these dolls, throw parties for them, and carry them around and let strangers pet them.
Come over the jump to see the clips, and for other baby news (yes, I did go from PMS to babies in a couple of hours. It'll probably be shopping next, then boys).
"It's very difficult to get a baby. And it's more expensive."
Now, I don't have children and I never liked dolls - even as a child I was freaked out by those drinking/weeing baby dolls. But. While this trend is disturbing and saddening, I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with it; there will always be women who need substitutes for their maternal urges - I mean, have you seen the way some people are with cats?
The creepy thing as far as I'm concerned is the Uncanny Valley effect: a hypothesis that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.
And also, if it looks and feels like a baby, but it doesn't move, cry or breathe - surely your brain would translate that as a dead baby?
Brrr.
Here's the YouTube clip from the Channel 4 documentary, My Fake Baby.
In other baby news (presumably real ones this time), Olivia and Jack are the most popular baby names in Britain. Makes a change from Kylie and Jordan, which is what bairns were called when I were a lass.
And some US companies are encouraging the new mothers among their staff to bring their babies to work rather than take maternity leave.
As you might imagine, this has had varying levels of success. Self-employed Joyce DeLucca set up a playroom complete with babysitter next to her office. Not sure this approach would work in, say, a chicken factory.
Or a fake baby factory. That could go wrong in so many ways.
Image courtesy of Anosmia's Flickr stream.
