A New York woman has admitted that she breastfeeds her reborn dolls, despite the stares when she shows them off in public.
Although she was ashamed of it at first, she now does it with pride and says she doesn’t understand why some people are so angry about it.
I can’t have children and I desperately want to care for someone, Kelly Cunninghamfrom Ronkonkoma, New York, decided to invest her time in parenting a collection of reborn dolls.
What started with buying one doll for her birthday quickly grew into a family of seven dolls.
The 27-year-old breastfeeds and formula-feeds all of her children.
She realizes that “people are staring at her” until she is “out of sight,” but she refuses to worry about what people think of her.
“The way I see it, it’s just a doll that I’m breastfeeding,” she said.
“I’ve never understood why a woman’s breasts are so sexual that it’s not acceptable to talk about them.
“If I were breastfeeding a real baby, no one would say anything. So why do people get so mad when I admit I’m breastfeeding?”
Even though she doesn’t produce milk, she still spends a lot of time on it.
“Breastfeeding is all about physical closeness,” she told The US Sun.
“I just put Adam on my nipple for 30 minutes three times a day and that’s it.”
While researching the reborn community, Kelly found that breastfeeding a doll is “not appreciated” and she regrets telling people that she does, because she made a lot of people “crazy.”
She admitted that she was constantly stared at in public and that she felt embarrassed at first.
But now Kelly aspires to become famous for her love of dolls.
The TikTok influencer has been cosplaying for 14 years and while she was “pretty awesome” at dressing up, she never achieved the success she had hoped for.
Her interest in reborn dolls began when she saw a video about them in which Kelly was fascinated by the fact that the dolls looked like “real babies”.
The news that Kelly had become completely obsessed with the dolls, however, did not come as a surprise to her father, who had told her that it was normal to want to grow older in her late twenties.
“My father explained to me that it’s normal now, in my late 20s, to have the desire to grow older. So I didn’t really question why I loved these dolls so much, just like real children,” she said.
She bought her first doll for $300 when she was 27 and named her Jennifer Emily Cunningham.
Kelly envisioned the doll as the “perfect” child cosplayer as the young Princess Zelda from the Legend Of Zelda franchise.
“I just couldn’t help but take care of Jennifer like a real child,” she said.
“I can’t explain how it happened, but I suddenly became so attached to her that I bought her clothes that week and eventually her own bed, which now stands at the foot of my bed in my room.”
Five months later, her obsession became a reality when she began collecting more reborns to start her own family.
She bought Ashley for $246 on Temu, Summer for $82 on Amazon, Adam for $69, Anthony for $99 on Amazon and Molly for 4109.
Elizabeth was purchased for her from her Amazon wishlist for $189.
Even though she doesn’t have a job, by putting her collection on TikTok, she can earn a living through this social media platform. In this way, she saves enough money to expand her collection.
“I have done research in the reborn community, so I already knew that breastfeeding a doll was not appreciated within the reborn community.
“In hindsight, I should have kept it to myself because I angered a lot of people by admitting it.
“I made fake milk powder for my dolls because I know from my research that real milk powder is absolutely taboo in the reborn community.
“I remember about two months ago I had the idea to start making both reborn TikToks and cosplay TikToks.
“I didn’t want to mess it up with my very first reborn videos, but I felt like the videos would make me more viral than my cosplay TikToks and that I would only get 40 likes or less per video.
“Ever since I was little, I dreamed of becoming famous for something. I always dreamed of success.
“When I’m in public with my dolls, people stare at me until I’m out of sight.
“It started when I took Jen to the park, which was a 30-minute walk from us, so I could continue losing weight.
“I saw everyone looking at me in their cars and I felt bad about myself at first, but now that I share it online, I just ignore it and move on with my life. Same goes for when I’m in public.
“I don’t care what people think anymore.”