I have seen several dramas on TV recently in which a baby is born. They show some very realistic newborn babies. Does anybody know if these are actually real babies, or if not, how they make them look so realistic? If they are real, how do they manage to do it?
The traditional way has been to get a baby a few weeks old and smear them with goo (I’ve heard jelly is often used)
Having held three newborns in my arms, I have to say that no baby born on a drama or sitcom is anywhere near as ugly as the ones in real life. Compare reality show footage with what you see on a drama.
Yes, I remember reading somewhere that cream cheese and jelly are used for that fresh-from-mom look. So much for that morning bagel! And yes, they use babies that are a couple of weeks old.
On shows like ER, sometimes dummies are used when they show them doing procedures on the baby.
I’d assume petroleum jelly.
Ah, yes, the little secret of birth: We’re all born ugly, and some of us remain so. 
It’s amazing that an animal could consider its own young ugly at any stage of the development process, but humans flesh out and get ultra-mega-cute rather quickly.
Well, I’ve held 2 newborns in my arms and they were awfully darn cute. Favoritism aside, they were definitely: nicely pink, no blood or other strange liquids, not noticably wrinkly. They did have a thin layer of the protective white “skin lotion” still on them but it was hardly noticable by sight. (If somebody could synthesize that stuff they’d make a fortune.)
If you took a month+ old premie that had grown a bit to be 6+ pounds and threw on a very light coat of good hand lotion, you’d have a pretty good approximation.
I have no idea where the idea that newborns are ugly comes from.
I used to think that, and then I saw this.
In the past, I’ve seen several shots of supposed newborns that were obviously 3 or 4 months old, with cooing sounds dubbed in. Newborns don’t coo.
Present-day TV’s much better in regards to this than they used to be.
Darnit. Darnit to heck.
None of those babies are ugly. At least a couple are obviously not healthy, and a couple of others have lots of moisture wrinkles (like one does after an excessively long bath) but since they spend 40 weeks in liquid, that’s to be expected. I’m not even going to touch the intellectual property/copyright issues involved in putting together that website.
Suffice to say that it doesn’t strike me as a legitimate cite of any position for a GQ thread.
This is why I hate watching movies with my mother(a neonatologist) and sister(OB/GYN). As soon as the baby’s delivered, inevitably, one of them will have to say “My God! that baby’s at least two months old!” Or some such thing. It’s distracting to say the least.
-Lil
FWIW back in the old days (silent and early talkies) there was a rule that no baby under the age of 1 could be used in a movie.
At the William S. Hart Ranch they have a craddle on display that looks like it could almost sleep an adult. It was a movie prop, so that a 1 year old would look like a newborn for the movies.
Personally, i think that most newborns bear a surprising resemblence to Winston Churchill and/or Alfred Hitchcock.
But that’s just me…
“Mr. Young hadn’t had to quiet a screaming baby for years. He’d never been much good at it to start with. He’d always respected Sir Winston Churchill, and patting small versions of him on the bottom had always seemed ungracious.”
–Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens
California statutes:
Churchill or Ghandi.
I was over 9 pounds at birth. Definitely a Churchill.
That’s because newborns have no chins. It facilitates easier breastfeeding.
Yeah, but it takes them forever to change a pillowcase.
RR
Hollywood has a long tradition of using older actors to portray kids. Half the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer hadn’t seen the inside of a high school in a decade.
By extension, some of the babies on ER are probably ten years old 
I’m laughing because my brain substituted “fold a king size bed sheet alone”.
However … in what fashion is a chin employed to change a pillow case?
For putting the new pillowcase on. Trap the uncased pillow under your chin and then feed the pillowcase up the bottom of the pillow.
I guess I’m a wierdo, then. I grab the pillow and ram it into the case. Or I scrunch the case up and wiggle it down the pillow, much like I would pull a shirt onto a one year old child.