Mormon Trek info

We just got done with our trek. I would offer suggestions on the baby. Make it look real and give it some weight. We had some homemade babies (6 inches – one piece) and another “family” brought their own porcelain baby dressed in a white blessing gown (nope, it didn’t get that dirty). The porcelain baby was treated very different than the homemade ones. Not because it was a cute baby (it wasn’t) or would break, but because of the gown, weight and proportion of the baby. Nobody could keep their hands off that baby even before you knew it was porcelain! It looked real from a distance. Guys and girls were flocking to this baby. Guys fought the girls to carry the baby along the trail.

Instead of a porcelain baby, go to a second hand store and see if you can find fabric/plastic dolls. Unstuff the doll’s body, arms, and legs, and replace with rice to give it some weight and maybe sew some clothes (definitely a bonnet). Our homemade babies just had a diaper wrapped in some fabric. The more real you make that baby, the better the experience.

But just to give you the heads up. Being the shadow of death and taking those babies away (because they “died”) is really hard. The families were deeply effected, even with the little homemade dolls. Hard to watch.

You are in for a great experience! Enjoy

Here is a suggestion on a book I found.

Cannon, A.E. (2002). Charlotte’s Rose. New York: Dell Yearling. As a twelve-year-old Welsh immigrant carries a motherless baby along the Mormon Trail in 1856, she comes to.