The Babóg Story
In 2018, Courtmacsherry-based doll-maker Laura Whalen started The Bábóg Project which aimed to make a small, palm sized doll for each of the 12,000 babies that are said to have died in Ireland’s mother and baby institutions.
This project has no other aim but to acknowledge that each of these infants were human beings with human stories, no matter how short their lives and they are therefore deserving of our love, care and attention.
Laura explains: “By making a doll for each child, we are in a way sitting with them for those 2 or 3 hours that it takes. We are acknowledging that they existed, that they were important and they are worthy of our time and attention. We acknowledge their story, without ever knowing it, and the stories of their mother and father.”
Laura has been a doll maker for the last 10 years. “I started making dolls for my own children and just fell in love with the whole process. I particularly love making custom dolls in the image of a child. In the summer of 2018 I had a conversation with a dear friend of mine. She had been born in a Mother and Baby Institution in Dublin. I was very moved by her story and offered to make her a tiny doll of herself: to represent the little girl she had been around the age that she had been adopted. To give her a tangible way to hold and love that little one, to hold and love the memory of herself.”
“She found that having this doll was very soothing and healing. She asked me if I could make dolls for her siblings too. They had also been born in Mother and Baby Institutions and her little brother died there when he was just 5 weeks old and is buried in a mass, unmarked “paupers” grave.
Of course I made those dolls; and while I made his little doll I cried, and cried, and I thought that every baby that this happened to should have some one hold them in this way; that they should be honoured in the time and love taken to make them their own little doll. That is when I did some research and realised that the numbers were staggering, estimated at 6,000 at the time. I knew there was no way I could make 6,000 dolls on my own and so The Bábóg Project was born”.