Countless hours of work go into hand-crafting each and every single reborn baby doll.

It’s a labour of love.

Deedria Shaw is a soul artist who creates Heirloom Reborn Baby Dolls here in Lethbridge, which are then shipped around the world.

They all have a multitude of uses.

“For anxiety, for people that have problems having children. Or for people that don’t want to have children but want to have that nurturing. For men, women, children. For children that suffer from anxiety, or that have lost a sibling,” said Shaw.

One of the more popular and well-known uses of the dolls have been to help those with dementia or Alzheimer’s. They are starting to become more common in the United States and Europe in 2010.

Recently, The York Care Centre in Fredericton started using the dolls to bring comfort to those living with Alzheimer’s disease.

The dolls are very lifelike, from the way they are painted, to how much they weigh.

Christen Friesen is a 14-year-old girl that likes to interact with the dolls because of how lifelike they are.

“[I] like how detailed they are, how unique they are, how heavy they are. The weight of them,” said Friesen.

The dolls are very intricately made with countless hours of work going into the creation of each.

From washing the kits, to hand painting and baking each layer of paint for 10 minutes at a time, it can take upwards of 40 hours to complete the lifelike appearance.

The dolls are so real, that Shaw has been pulled over by the Lethbridge Police when transporting her dolls in her car, because they weren’t in a car seat.

“I always make sure to put mine in a car seat, I don’t want to be pulled over,” said Renee Schellhorn, the owner of reborn baby dolls.

Each of the dolls can be handled like and dressed like a real baby, with one major difference.

The dolls won’t grow out of the clothes that you buy them.

Deedria Shaw can be found on Facebook and her work can be found on different Lethbridge buy and sell pages.