Kira Cousins, 23, allegedly tricked her then boyfriend and family into believing she was pregnant then pretended a plastic doll was her newborn baby – and has now spoken out for the first time
A woman at the centre of a ‘fake baby’ scandal has spoken out about the controversy for the very first time.
Kira Cousins, a 23-year-old former supermarket worker, made headlines around the world last October after she deceived her then boyfriend and family into thinking she was pregnant – before passing off a plastic doll as her newborn baby.
Now, in her first ever interview, Kira explained why she faked giving birth to a daughter she named Bonnie-Leigh Joyce, while ex-boyfriend Jamie Gardner said he genuinely believed the doll was real.
Kira, from Airdrie, Scotland, acknowledged that what she did was wrong – but claimed she was unable to tell Jamie she was no longer pregnant after suffering a miscarriage.
She told the Sunday Mail: “I couldn’t tell him. I did lose a child. I’d tried to tell him when I first lost the child. I still have messages on my phone which said, ‘Jamie, we need to sit down,’ but I couldn’t speak to him about anything. I can hold my hands up and say, ‘No, I shouldn’t have used a doll’, but at the same time, nobody knows what our relationship was like.”
Jamie told how he believed he had become a father, and insisted he would not have continued the relationship had he known that Bonnie-Leigh Joyce was a doll. He said: “If I had ever known that was really a doll, I’d have run off sooner. I’ve not got a clue what really happened to be honest.”
Kira wore an artificial baby bump for months, shared baby scan images and even threw a lavish gender reveal party where the couple were photographed together celebrating upon learning they were expecting a daughter.
Throughout a deception that spanned several months, she also posted pictures of baby clothes and gifts, including a £1,000 pram and car seat, alongside what is believed to have been AI-generated footage showing the “baby” kicking inside her womb. She wrote about hospital appointments and claimed antenatal tests had detected a heart defect.
Kira said she allowed Jamie to believe she was still pregnant, and her elaborate deception spiralled out of control because she was frightened of telling him the truth. She said: “I think there was a bit of fear and shock as well. I’d gone through that myself. How do you tell someone that you’ve already gone through all that by yourself?”.
“Before all this, we had also fallen out and it was really bad. He hadn’t wanted the baby at first and I think that didn’t help. He had gone from that to, ‘Here we go, we are actually going to have it,’ and then to wanting it.”
Jamie said he has no recollection of her ever attempting to tell him she had suffered a miscarriage.
Kira went on to claim she had given birth to a baby weighing 5lb 4oz, and said she was able to maintain the ruse by keeping her own unsuspecting family away from the doll.
She said: “All of my family had been asking, ‘What is going on?”. Is she depressed?’ because I wouldn’t let anyone near that doll, only me and Jamie.”
She claims Jamie had cared for what he believed was their newborn during visits to his parents’ home.
Just days before her deception was uncovered, she had feared the truth about their so-called daughter was about to unravel when younger relatives grew suspicious. They revealed how they believed the “baby” they had travelled with during a car journey was in fact a doll.
It is understood it was Kira’s mother who eventually discovered the lifelike doll concealed in her bedroom in October, while those closest to Kira grew suspicious after never hearing the “baby” cry. Kira is said to have claimed that Bonnie-Leigh died.
She said: “He took that doll, without me, to his mum and dad’s house, which is about a 20-minute drive. Everyone in that house saw it and none of them twigged. It all came out days after we had picked Jamie’s relatives up from a birthday party.
“The doll had been in the back of the car. I had been thinking, ‘How do I get out of this now?’. When the boys got out of the car, they said to their mum, ‘That was a doll.’ No-one said to Jamie at that point, no-one had asked him what was going on.”
Kira claimed she was ultimately forced to confess to Jamie that the baby was in fact a lifelike plastic doll several days later.
Recounting the moment she finally came clean to Jamie, she said: “He said, ‘You’re a psycho,’ and walked out. That was the last time we’ve ever saw each other.”
Jamie disputes that it was Kira who told him directly, and said when he found out the truth it was not “through her”.
Kira questioned whether her family and friends genuinely did not realise the ‘baby’ was a doll, and said: “If they didn’t, they were stupid.”
Kira claims she has spoken to Jamie on the phone since the scandal broke. She said: “We have spoken quite a few times since, but it’s weird. I can’t even understand what we are because we don’t hate each other, but we don’t love each other.
“When I first got back in contact with Jamie after this, one of the first things I asked him was if he really knew. People think there is one picture of Jamie with the doll and everyone thinks he held it once, but he didn’t. I’ve got hundreds more. No one was near that doll except me and Jamie. So if anyone should have known, it was Jamie.”
Kira also claims she pulled out of a planned TV documentary about the scandal over concerns about how it would be edited. Jamie, who refused to take part in the programme, added: “I want to get as far away from her as possible. I just want to move on with my life.”
