I shot a baby...on purpose

The other night I made a house call. A lady wanted a family portrait and a baby portrait.  Since (most) babies are cuter than families, I'm only posting the baby.  Shot with an EOS 40D, 18-55 IS @ 41mm, f/6.3, ISO 100, 1/80 sec., 550EX w/custom diffuser on rotating flash bracket set to ETTL.  Here is the after-1-hour-in-Gimp picture:

I like this final product. It seems as if the subject- excuse me- the baby is perfectly placed in the hands, and it seems the shot was perfectly composed.  Well it was and it wasn't.  It was a nice composition, but waay too distracting for my taste.  As you'll see from the original below, the picture was lacking something. That something was negative space that the finished product above provided.  It made the baby receive the proper attention. Here is the straight out of camera shot:

Lesson for the day: 'Sometimes tweaking is better than deleting.'