In the foyer of this suburban house stands a large pram where a newborn sleeps, his skin slightly mottled with delicate red markings, his eyes scrunched closed.

"He's waiting to be adopted out," says Sherry Anne Albi.

As are the others: Hazel, a 3-month-old, smiling from her baby bucket; Alanna sleeping on the living room couch, her pink belly button protruding; and newborn Joya sucking a pacifier, a trace of infant acne on her face, her wrinkly fingers still clenched.

And on the dining room table lie several bald vinyl heads, arms and legs, all waiting for the painstaking painting, some eight or nine fine layers of flesh, capillaries, hints of veins and porelike finish.

"When you're done, it's a baby, all angelic and sweet," says Albi, 48, cradling her arms as if rocking an infant. "And you know it's going to make someone else happy."

Albi, who works out of her Mississauga home, creates "reborns," a baby doll trend started in the U.S. a decade ago distinguished by dainty details maybe a trace of white along the tot's teensy nails, as if just trimmed that make the dolls appear eerily lifelike.

So lifelike, according to a popular story appearing on reborn websites, that an Australian police officer smashed a car window to rescue what he thought was an unconscious baby left in a car seat, only to find out it was a doll.

So lifelike, some people recoil.

Deborah Langhoff of Sheboygan, Wisc., once brought Daniel, with his wispy brown hair and still puffy newborn eyes, to show off at work.

"Some called him cute, some said he was creepy," recalls the 46-year-old lab inspector. "One guy full of tattoos and facial piercings went `Yhew' and ran away."

And he hadn't even seen the prices. Reborns sell on the Internet for $100 and up. Way up. In a recent eBay auction, one of Albi's newborns, Hannah, fetched $4,300 from a Hong Kong woman.

Some buyers simply go gaga over babies. "Looking at and holding my reborns takes me back to when my daughters were newborns. It was such a special time," explains Australian Antonietta Tenace, 47, mother of two grown children (real) and triplet babies (fake).

Some fall in love with a particular face. Others just can't explain it.

"I know it's weird," laughs Langhoff, who keeps her four reborns in a cradle. A dog owner, not a mother, she's never wanted kids.

But somehow these dolls tugged at her heart. Particularly Daniel, done by Albi. "Something in his face struck me. I think back to a picture of my father as a baby."

Some people ask Albi for custom work. In four years, she has received only one sad request: A mother, whose 30-year-old daughter died, wanted a doll resembling her as an infant. Then the woman emailed: Could she send a sachet of her daughter's ashes to be put in where the doll's heart would be?

"What could I say? No? To lose a child ... " says Albi, a mother of four, getting teary remembering. "That was my quirkiest. I think it was a healing thing for her."

Albi is sitting at her dining room table with its body parts display: a vaguely veined head with empty eye sockets, a chubby leg with curled-down toes.

She saw her first reborn four years ago when her mother bought one. Albi's father had recently died, and her mother felt lonely. Again, "a healing thing."

"I put it in my arms and thought, `This is innocence.' I got hooked right away," explains Albi, a baby doll lover as a girl. "I'm just the mothering type, I guess."

Albi, also artsy-craftsy, decided to make the dolls and, maybe, make some dough. Her husband and kids, now age 14 to 24, encouraged her. "Even my sons."

Back then, reborn artists taught themselves today websites offer tips and they transformed dolls, stripping the paint, sanding the heads. Now these modern Geppettos buy kits of sculpted vinyl forms with various pouts and puckers.

For Albi, it was all trial and error, with a high casualty count. Like unfortunate Amanda, disfigured with an odd head injury, sitting in the corner rocker. "Too long in the oven. Poor little thing." Some experiments live in the basement.

She calls them babies on purpose: to make herself strive for an evermore authentic look, which is tediously time-consuming to achieve. Each slender newborn hair, fine mohair, is rooted individually with a small needle no one likes an infant with plugs. The bodies are precisely weighted, fibrefill in the tummies, minute beads in the bums. The gestation period: seven days.

One year Albi set up a table of her babies at a toy show, among the teddy bears and conventional dolls.

"That was a blinking nightmare. At one point I thought they were going to haul me out and put me on a stake. About half the people said, 'Why do you do this? They're creepy.' I got dirty looks. But the other half said, 'Oh, they're gorgeous.'

"So Albi, who is finally turning a profit, stays happily in cyberspace, selling on eBay and her website, foreverweeones.com