“I was afraid of forgetting the details of her face, her hairline, her little trumpet nose… I know she's not my daughter Lucie, she's a doll, but her presence do well ".
Opening the memory box of her baby, who died in 2017, Audrey delicately lifts a silicone baby doll dressed in a white and pink knit.
This reborn baby, ultra-realistic, with his slightly mottled skin, typical of newborns, his shiny mouth, his little wrinkled feet… Everything looks just like a real baby.
To her baby.
Because for Audrey, realism has been pushed to the extreme.
“I asked to have the exact replica of my daughter, from photos I had taken before her death.
She is also the same weight and height as her.
32 cm for 640 grams”.
In 2017, the young woman, pregnant with her first child, gave birth to a premature little girl, Lucie.
The newborn lived only five days.
Four years later, and despite the birth of her son Gabriel in 2019, Audrey cannot heal her wounds.
She then contacts Vicky, a reborner who makes these realistic dolls and who regularly posts her new creations on TikTok.
“It was seeing his work on the networks that I took the plunge.
I contacted her and told her my story,” recalls Audrey.
Moved, Vicky agrees to help Audrey and offers her the reborn.
“Initially, when I started making reborn babies, says Vicky, it was for me.
For the pleasure of collecting.
But when I realized that it could go beyond,
that it could help women like Audrey to overcome bereavement or make up for the lack of a child, it gave another dimension to what I was doing.
And I'm proud of it, ”explains the reborner.
This phenomenon of "reborn" babies or renaissance babies in French, straight from the United States, is experiencing a boom in France, particularly via social networks.
These dolls resembling like two drops of water to real infants, used at first for the cinema, have become for some women “therapy babies”.
“It can help grieving moms get better.
It's true.
As in the case of Audrey, notes Vicky.
On the other hand, there are those who go too far.
I have already seen women take their reborn babies in strollers, go to the doctor or go to the beach with them.
Some give them the bottle… Well, I'm not here to judge, if it makes them feel good why not…”, she adds.
For Audrey, there is no question of taking her reborn baby out to a playpen, or of putting diapers on her.
Her doll, she keeps it for herself, in this blue box that she only takes out “when the pain is too intense”.
“I can understand that it may seem creepy to some people.
But this doll, it makes me feel good.
It's not a replacement baby.
For me, it's like a photo of my daughter but that I can take in my arms.
It's more tangible.
And since I have it, it calms me down.
I'm finally getting better."