Lexington, KY ? There have been thousands of dolls made over the years. Little blank-faced, soft-bodied, bald bundles with colorful hospital gowns tied at their neck.

For the women of Hadassah who make them, they are a gift. For the children who receive them, a lifeline.

“The point of the dolls is to allow us to prepare a child for procedures,” said Judi Martin, a child life coordinator at the University of Kentucky Hospital.

A procedure might be a special cast, a surgery or even an amputation. Immersed in a foreign world filled with all kinds of language they don’t understand, a child can create some scary scenarios unless things are explained clearly. Who knows what a toddler sees in her head when she hears, say, “spica cast”?

Staff members use the dolls to demonstrate what will happen. The dolls are even fitted with miniature apparatus if that is what is in store for the child. For a spica cast, for example, the dolls are placed in a full cast on one leg and half a cast on the other.

This kind of show and tell eases their fears and sometimes even helps the grown-ups to understand exactly what is going on.

And sometimes, Martin said, a kid just needs something smushy to hang onto for comfort. And because each child gets his or her own doll, that cuts down on the chance of germs passing among patients.

Some of the kids who come in for multiple procedures bring their dolls with them every time they return to the hospital.

To personalize a doll, children can draw on the face to make it his or her own. One child, Martin said, made a sad face on one side and a happy face on the other. Another drew a single tear.

For about 10 years, the dolls have been made by the members of the Lexington chapter of Hadassah, a Jewish women’s group. The group and the hospital have a special relationship going back decades, said the group’s president, Lynn Furness. A hospital the group supports in Israel opened the same year as the children’s hospital at Kentucky and is undergoing an expansion, just like the university.

Just how many dolls have been produced is not clear. Hadassah is an international organization, and individual chapters around the country have similar projects. The Lexington chapter makes dolls only for the University of Kentucky.

Hadassah is an all-volunteer group, said Furness, so keeping the project going has been an accomplishment. Over the years, various members have cut, stuffed, stitched and sewed. Furness has a scrapbook that chronicles the progress of the doll project with pictures celebrating milestones, like the 50th doll completed or the lyrics to a rap created to extol the project’s virtues at a luncheon. The group buys some supplies and also receives donations and tries to spread the word about what they are doing and get others involved.

This summer, kids at Camp Shalom, the day camp sponsored by Central Kentucky Jewish Federation, stuffed dozens of dolls that had been stitched by others as a mitzvah, or good deed.

Victoria Scarborough is the latest force behind the project. She handles the finished dolls gently and takes special pride in picking out colorful patterns for the gowns, like SpongeBob SquarePants for boys and Tinkerbell for girls.

The Danville woman has made more than 265 dolls in two years, averaging about four dolls a week. She has stuffing the bodies with batting down to a quick 30 minutes, and she has worked out a system for cutting and sewing them.

And, she said, when she finishes each one, she says a prayer for the child who will receive it.

Martin said that there have been some changes over the years. At one time, the group tried to mimic real skin colors in the dolls. But lately, they have settled on a variety of pastels. But, she said, the volunteers have produced a consistently high-quality product. The kids love being able to pick out a doll in an outfit that reflects their personality.

Children who are staying at the hospital are first to receive the limited number of dolls available. After that, she said, the dolls can be used for children coming into the emergency room or receiving outpatient treatment.

“We use every one we get,” she said. “They will never go to waste.”

For the women of Hadassah, Furness said, it’s a labor of love. “I like to put myself in their place. God forbid it was my child in the hospital frightened.

“It’s just something that makes you feel good.”