While I was pregnant with my second child, my mother wanted to buy my daughter her own baby doll. I spent countless hours searching the internet for the perfect, natural baby doll. I wanted a doll that was about the size of a newborn baby, in order that it could share clothes with the real baby in our family. Eventually, we ordered a doll from a local dollmaker. The doll was very expensive. When it arrived, we were sorely disappointed. The doll was only about eight inches long and looked like it had a blonde afro. The face was very strange looking too. We returned the doll to the doll maker, and the search began again. I found a doll maker on the east coast who made beautiful dolls. When I contacted her, she was no longer able to make dolls due to arthritis. Our frustration level was growing, so my mother ended up ordering Baby Annabell.
Baby Anabell
Baby Annabell has plastic limbs and face, but the body is made of cloth. She cries and says, “Mama”, etc. She comes with a pacifier, bottle, rattle, etc. Once the baby doll arrived, I anxiously awaited for the batteries to die and my daughter’s imagination to take over. You can turn the doll off, but my daughter quickly figured out how to turn it back on. With one real baby crying in the house, why did I need a doll that cried too? Since then, we have been given 3 more plastic baby dolls by various friends and family. After the initial fascination wore off, these other dolls were given to more needy families (one was sacrificed by our puppy!). Even though she had Baby Annabell, I still wanted my daughter to have a more natural doll. I kept searching the internet. Eventually, I found two dolls that I like very much. One is an organic Waldorf style doll available from Waldorf Treasures. This doll is smaller than Baby Annabell, but it comes with several organic cotton outfits that are really cute. The other cloth doll I found was at Pottery Barn kids. This doll comes with a cloth diaper and outfit. It is not quite the size of a normal newborn baby, but it can wear real baby clothes. Now, all three of the baby dolls play together, while my daughter plays mommy.