First pictures of Toni Braxton & Keri Lewis' newest production: baby Denim - Exclusive! - Interview

Ebony, April, 2002 by Joy Bennett Kinnon

TONI Braxton's signature sultry voice is even huskier than usual these days. Hoarse from lack of sleep, the superstar singer and actress told EBONY in an exclusive interview that the new young man in her life is keeping her up at night.

It's not relationship drama that's keeping her awake. She and husband Keri Lewis are celebrating their first wedding anniversary this month, and Toni is beaming because of their new addition, Denim Kole Braxton Lewis, whose impatient entrance into the world last December changed their personal world forever.

Because of Denim, Braxton has added lullabies to the repertoire of torch songs that have turned up the heat on her career.

"I love being a mom!" the six-time Grammy Award winner says, "and I love being married to `my baby's daddy' and having him here. I feel really fortunate."

Lewis, 31, a former member of Mint Condition, was right there in the delivery room, cutting the cord for their first child, who arrived by Caesarean section performed, she says, by "a Sister," Dr. Jacqueline Walters, in Atlanta's Northside Hospital.

"I was a little jealous," Braxton, 33, says, "because I didn't get to hold the baby at first. Keri held him first, but from the moment I heard his first cry I couldn't believe it. It took about 24 hours for it to really sink in that I had this beautiful baby. I was addicted to him from the beginning, from the first look."

That first loving look of motherhood occurred three weeks before Denim's original Christmas Day due date. Braxton says the baby was threatening to arrive the week before Thanksgiving and she was given medication to slow his impending arrival. But he still arrived earlier than anticipated. "Once he threatened to come early, the doctor planned a C-section, but he came a week earlier than they had planned," she says. Denim was so impatient to get into the world that he arrived Sunday, Dec. 2, weighing 5 pounds, 12 ounces and was 19 1/2 inches long.

His unusual name surprised many Braxton fans who assumed that the boy would be named for his father. "Until a month before he was born, I thought Keri wanted to name him `KJ' or Keri Jr., but then he decided mat the baby should have his own identity," she says. Denim is the American version of the English name Denham, she says, but she didn't want people to mispronounce the name and call her son, Den-HAM. "I've always loved the name, it's a great name," she adds. She got the name from a character in one of her favorite movies, To Sir With Love. "The tough guy in that movie had that name," she says.

Keri is very excited about his new son, the new mom adds. He was so excited that he filled her hospital room with gifts from her favorite store, Tiffany & Co. When she came out of the operating room, she found her favorite flowers--tulips--and bunches of balloons. "Dad [Keri] did a great job," she says.

The new parents, like all new parents, got little or no sleep at all in the baby's first weeks at home. "I haven't slept since Dec. 1," Braxton says, laughing. "We were both up together at night, but we quickly realized that wasn't a good idea because by daybreak we were both tired." Now, she adds, they "have shifts and we switch off--I'll take the night and he'll take the day."

Braxton says she was so sleepy one night that she went upstairs to feed the baby and picked up his blanket and thought she had the baby.

Denim is receiving formula because problems with Braxton's previous reconstruction surgery following breast implants made it physically impossible for her to nurse him, she says.

Toni and Keri have installed sophisticated sound and television monitors in the nursery so they can monitor him from the master bedroom suite. "We know when he's crying," she says.

Although Braxton's April 2001 fairy-tale wedding featured her favorite "Tiffany blue" color scheme, she didn't choose that color scheme for the nursery. "I wanted to do it that way, but Keri said, `no, absolutely not!' The nursery looks like the inside of a sailboat."

Braxton suffered with nausea and heartburn throughout the pregnancy and gained only 20 pounds. "I had so much heartburn, and the baby has a full head of hair, so I guess the old wives tale is true," she says, laughing. Known for her eye-catching, striking ensembles pre-pregnancy, Braxton, who is working on a clothes line of her own, says she isn't following any special fitness routine now. "I'm doing some aerobic tapes a couple of times a week, but although I did lose a lot with the baby, I'm really going to have to work to get it together," she says. "Everything is not in the same place--my thighs are doing something totally different."

But a few stubborn postpartum pounds won't derail the woman who has bounced back from being "broke, dumped and pimped" as she put it, to enjoy a lucrative--$20 million--recording contract, a top-selling, award-winning 2000 album, The Heat, and a loving marriage. Braxton also made her film debut last year in the comedy Kingdom Come.