41. Bouncing Baby Boy

( I added a few more embellishments to this piece before mailing.)

Bouncing Baby Boy
4 x 6. Paper, fabric
Excerpt: He felt good, though. At eight pounds and thirteen ounces, he had the solidity of a brick. Holding him in those first few minutes I head a sound I'd only heard three other times in my life, at the births of my daughters and my first grandson. It was the song of the newborn, that series of little piggy snorty noises that babies make for only a few minutes -- an hour, an hour and a half? -- after they're born. I breathed in the smell of his head, that infant earthy odor, like a plowed field as you drive past in the late winter.
A nurse came to take the baby... . It was when she drew his arms through an undershirt that I finally relaxed. An undershirt on a newborn is a certain sign there's nothing to fear.
41 in the It's Only a Book project in which I'm deconstructing my 2003 book, Grace: A Memoir, and turning it into art. Sent to Julie in North Carolina.