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Weighing 5 kilograms, with perfectly combed hair and eyes closed in sleep, Abby looks like a baby girl. But she is a doll, adopted by a grieving mother to help come to terms with the loss of a child.

"She reminds me of my daughter as an infant," said Eve Hasty, a 57-year-old from the United States who bought Abby from a British company for $300. The retired driver, who lives in Oklahoma, lost her daughter to leukemia when she was only 7.

She has a surviving son in his 30s who has provided her with an 8-year-old granddaughter, but she finds the doll - which she acquired in 2009, three decades after losing her daughter - comforting.

"I just get a type of serenity about me when I hold her, I change her clothes," she said.

Hasty has bought Abby a wardrobe full of outfits, including a tiny pair of Nike trainers that she could never have afforded to give her children.

"When my daughter was born, money was tight, we had a budget. This time, I could be extravagant. I went shopping like you would have thought I was having triplets. That was therapeutic," she said.

Her case is far from unique.

Nikki Hunn, the 35-year-old British designer who created Abby, said most of her clients are collectors. But she has made half a dozen "reborn babies" for bereaved mothers as the trend, which began in the US, moved to the United Kingdom and Australia.

As the niche market grew, a professional association, the International Reborn Doll Artists (IRDA), was created in 2005 to promote "cutting edge" techniques in the craft of creating these uncannily life-like creatures.

The IRDA has drawn up its own code of ethics, which includes "speaking honorably of every doll that has been sculpted, manufactured or reborn", according to its website. It also holds annual conventions, the next one in California in June.

Not all reborns are custom-made. Today, hundreds can be found for sale on websites like eBay - including different ethnic models and even a reborn baby orangutan - with starting bids that can run up to $800 and $900.

Creating each doll is painstaking work, but the results are astonishing.

The dolls are disturbingly real, and that's the intention. One client even gave Hunn a picture of a baby to copy.

（中國日報網英語點津 Helen 編輯）

Todd Balazovic is a reporter for the Metro Section of China Daily. Born in Mineapolis Minnesota in the US, he graduated from Central Michigan University and has worked for the China Daily for one year.