Cover Girl Céline

       These are the beautiful pictures that Celine Dion thought she 
would never see.  After six soul-searching years she and her devoted 
husband Rene Angelil feared their marriage would never be blessed with
children.  Now, in their magnificent home near Jupiter in Florida, they
cradle tiny Rene-Charles in their arms and the joy is etched on their
faces for all to see.  This tiny bundle of humanity has had a profound
effect on the woman who has sold 125 million albums-more than any other
female artiste in history.  She told HELLO! She will never again return
to the punishing schedule of touring the world's greatest stadiums and
performing to packed houses.  She is determined her greatest legacy will
not be her music but Rene Junior and he brother or sister who will surely follow.
	HELLO! is the first publication to be invited into Celine and
Rene's exquisite Tuscan-style mansion.  There, among the beautiful
antique furniture, marble floors and hand-painted murals, are some
new accessories.  There are toys, teddy bears, a Moses basket, even a
little machine for disposing of nappies, together with so many other
signs that this is no longer just the home of a married celebrity couple.
It is a family home.
	In just three weeks Rene-Charles has filled his parents' lives
and home with his presence.  In the main living room is a day cot and
a small wicker basket stacked with a tiny mountain of soft toys.  In
Rene's opulent study is a grand leather chair with a balloon attached
to it exclaiming: It's a boy!
	On the terrace stands an elegant blue Silver Cross pram.  In
the nursery there is a beautiful antique crib.  Inside sits a hand
-stitched blue pillow with the words "Rene-Charles born January 25th
2001, weighing 6 pounds 8 ounces, 20 and a half inches", which was a
present from Gloria Estefan and her husband Emilio.
	Beside the crib, on a beautiful Louis XVth-style cabinet, is a
card that says: "Merci Papa pour ma nouvelle voiture, je t'aime"
(thank you daddy for my new car, I love you)-a joking thank you for the
blue Silver Cross pram.)
	Celine, still only 32, doesn't just walk into the living room
to greet us-she floats.  For if ever a woman was walking on air, it is
she.  "Have you seen my son yet, isn't he beautiful?" she says.  And
then she repeats it as if to almost pinch herself.  "My son! What a
beautiful phrase, it makes me tingle every time I say it."  And she says
it over and over again during the two days we spent with her and each
time her face glowed with pride.
	Her smile is infectious.  Her mother and father, her sister
and brother-in-law, the photographer and I start laughing because the
pop diva can't contain her happiness.
	For six years she and her 59-year-old husband Rene have been
trying for a child.  As she toured the world she spoke in many interviews
of her desire to become a mother.   Even when Rene fell victim to a
cancer he has now beaten, their resolve was undiminished.  Then she
took the huge step of walking away from showbusiness to follow an
intensive round of in vitro fertilization treatment in the hope that
she would conceive.
	Celine skips over to a gazebo, perched on a terrace overlooking
a waterway that is full of dazzling yachts, for our first photograph.
She looks as though she could have just returned from three months in
a health farm, rather than recovering from the trauma of a Caesarean
section.
	As the puts Rene Junior into a tiny Moses basket shaded by a
silk parasol she says: "I can't explain it to you.  I hardly sleep
because I don't want to miss a second of Rene's first few weeks.  I
guess, like all new mothers, I want to make sure he is all right. 
But I don't feel at all tired, I am so elated and excited by it all. 
I love to watch him stretch out.  His tiny hands poke out the side of
his bed covers.
		"The entire pregnancy has been a dream.  So many people
were wishing us success after the years of disappointment that I felt
as if they were all carrying the baby with me.  I have 13 brothers and
sisters and my mother was sick for nearly nine months with each and
everyone of us.  I was prepared for the worst, but didn't have a single
day's illness.
	"I almost wanted to be sick because it would have been a tangible
proof that I was pregnant.  But I know that in reality I was very,
very lucky.  Like all mothers-to be I read all the right books and did
all the right things, taking exercise, drinking lots of water and eating
healthy foods.  I wanted to give myself every advantage I could."
	They pose for the first picture with Rene cradling his new son
in his arms.  Celine looks at him and loses her composure.  "Look at
Rene.  I have never seen him look like that in all the years I have
known him!  He is not just proud, he is bursting with pride."  Then
she kisses him gently n the forehead, while embracing his face in her
hands.  She has tears in her eyes.
	The baby's birth was not without drama.  Rene explains: "Celine
went for an ultrasound on Monday, January 22 and everything was normal.
The next day she said o me, "I feel as if the baby is not moving as
much as yesterday.'
	"She called the doctor and we went over to see him.  He took
another ultrasound, then told us the umbilical cord was very close to
the baby's head.  He said that bay was ready to come out, so why take
a risk that something bad could happen.  We went in that night and they
started to induce Celine at 11:30pm.  The labour started, but the next
day, after 24 hours of contractions, she had only dilated 2cm.
	"They said the heart rate of he baby was going up, so again
they didn't want to take any chances in case he was in distress.  They
really wanted Celine to have a natural birth, but we were all concerned
that something wasn't quite right and so we opted for a Caesarean
section.  We had both seen a Caesarean on TV the week before, so we knew
what to expect.  I think it would have been a tough thing to watch
without that knowledge."
	The birth was witnessed by Rene and Celine's sister Linda who,
with her husband Alain, will be godparents to Rene-Charles.  "We went
into the delivery room at exactly 12:50am on Thursday," adds Rene."
"The doctors were incredible, fast, efficient an extremely caring. 
Just ten minutes later Rene-Charles was here.  When you consider it took
them five minutes to set up the equipment, it was so fast.
	"The baby came out crying and he had the umbilical cord wrapped
around this neck, but fortunately it wasn't tight.  I t just meant the
doctors had made the right choice, otherwise it could have been a tragedy.
	"I can't remember what I said to Celine, but as she clutched
the baby to her chest she was crying, I was crying, Linda was crying
and even the doctors and nurses were crying!"
	Celine's obstetrician, Dr Ronald Ackerman, and his partner Dr
Steven Pliskow performed the operation.  "There wasn't a dry eye in the
house, everybody was crying tears of joy," recalls Dr Ackerman.
	After Rene helped cut the umbilical cord, Rene-Charles laying
his mother's arms for several minutes before being washed and wrapped
in a hospital-issue blue-and-pink striped blanket, together with a 
woolen cap.
	Shortly after the birth Celine called her mother Therese, who
was asleep in the five-star Hotel Le Bristol in Paris, where she had
gone to film episodes of the cooking programme she hosts on Canadian TV.
	"I heard the baby's first cries on the telephone," said
Therese, 73.  "Celine told me, 'the baby is in good health but the
mother, she is tired.'"  In a later call to her mother Celine added:
"He has Rene's little feet, Rene's toes and the little ears of Rene,
but he has my chin and my hair colour."
	Celine stayed in a green-and-peach decorated maternity room
for the new three days.  I t had a bathroom, dining table and two
foldaway beds that Rene and Linda slept on at night.
	Little Rene slept between his parents and Celine laughs as she
tells me:  "It was really a battle to get a chance to hold Rene Junior,
because his daddy wouldn't let anyone else have a look-in.  His face
was a mixture of disbelief and love for his son.  After all, it is only
two years since he was fighting cancer.  Rene was very involved.  He
slept beside me, helped me with the feeds and changed the baby every
three hours."
	Rene adds: "I slipped out of the hospital to visit Babies 'R'
Us for a bottle sterilizer, a nursing pillow and a baby car seat, only
to find out late that Celine had already bought them all.  I guess I
was just in a daze."
	Celine said the baby's birth left her with only one regret
-that she was no longer pregnant.  "If you are sick and you have had
a hard time, I don't think you are that anxious to get pregnant again.
When Rene contracted caner two years ago, we decided to have some
sperm frozen because we were told the chemotherapy could cause some
problems."
	Tests before freezing showed that Rene's sperm count was already
too low for the most common form of the IVF treatment.  So they tried
a procedure known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection, where a single
isolated sperm is used to fertilize an egg, which is then placed in the
uterus.
	In February 2000, a month after she had announced a two-year
break from showbusiness, they visited a fertility clinic.  In June,
after undergoing a series of drug treatments and invasive, sometimes
painful procedures, Celine received a phone call at home.
	"The doctor, Zev Rosenwaks, told me to get Rene.  Then he said
over the phone's loudspeaker, 'Congratulations, lovers, you're pregnant,
Celine.'  I feel like I have been holding my breath ever since that day.
If they told me to rest I would go to bed for two days.  I wanted to
leave nothing to chance.
	"My mother would ring and say, 'Are you feeling sick yet?'
Everyone was asking me similar questions, so I started thinking, 'Am
I really pregnant' But I really had hardly a problem.  The only one
was when I started to get a strange flickering feeling in my stomach.
Rene felt them with his hand and we were concerned that it was the baby's
heart.  So I went to the doctor, only to find he was suffering form a
bad case of hiccups, which he still gets now after the birth."
	Celine was having problems sleeping before she gave birth.
"It was only because I was so excited, nothing more.  I had my physiotherapist
come in to give some massage on my lower back, but it was nothing bad.
It just didn't matter that I wasn't sleeping well, I wanted this baby
so badly."
	Celine tried playing music to the baby after reading that it
would be good for him.  "I was singing in the shower almost every day.
I also played classical music for him.  But then I almost deliberately
forgot about it, because I didn't want to make too much fuss.
	"I just don't agree with women who complain that they have to
do all the hard work in pregnancy.  I think it is such a privilege to
give a baby its first home inside your body.  This is particularly
true when you feel it growing, you aren't sick and everything is
going
so well.
	"After I gave birth I still felt as if the baby was inside me.
I found myself still massaging my stomach gently.  I kind of miss him.
When he's outside in the world everyone can touch him and see him, which
is normal.  I can't say I want him only for me, but I miss him being in
my body, stretching, hiccupping even.  It was a wonderful, deep, loving,
fulfilling feeling."
	Celine, Rene and the baby have already established a routine.
"I go to bed around 11pm, get ready for my sleep and feed the baby. 
Rene insists on taking him in his arms until he falls asleep.  WE put
him to bed beside me.  He will wake every three hours for a feed, but
he doesn't cry, so I listen for him breathing.
	"The first few days I wanted to know if he was breathing, so
I just couldn't sleep properly.  I would watch to see if the sheets
were going up and down.  Once I could not see the sheets moving at all.
I put my hand under his nose and I could feel nothing.  I jumped out of
bed, but just as I did he let out his long 'Aaahhh' sound, as if to say,
"Mummy, stop fussing about and go to sleep!'
	"He skips meals sometimes, allowing me to sleep, but usually
he feed every three hours.  He seems to open his eyes when he is hungry.
I don't want to spoil him by forcing him to eat when he is not hungry.
	"I used to sleep then hours a day, but not any more.  But it
doesn't trouble me at all.  At 7am I wake and feed him, then Rene takes
the baby and cuddles him, sitting in the rocking chair watching TV.
	Her sister Linda lives nearby and arrives at the house around
10am to help.  "She will bath Rene-Charles while I get dressed.  Then
I breakfast and so does Rene-Charles again!
	"It seems crazy, but I actually miss him when he is with Linda
or my mother.  I have to learn to share him, but I wish I could have
him every moment of the day.  I can't believe how he has changed me
already."
	Celine admits she has given up a lot for he baby, but she has
no regrets.  "I told my husband I can't imagine being involved in
showbusiness with babies.  They have teething problems, colds, earaches,
they need security and a home.  When I am on the road I can't sleep
straight after a show because of the adrenaline.  I wake at noon, have
breakfast quickly while my sister is packing things up, take the plane
around 1:30pm and move to the next venue.
	"You then land in a city, immediately start vocal exercises
and sound checks, then it is food time, followed by stretching, make 
-up and hair styling.  That is no life for a baby.  I couldn't run
around with him under my arm.  I want to be with him, doing things
with him, nurturing him and helping him grow.
	"I haven't even been training for a year and I have to say I
absolutely love my new life.  I have become a housewife and there is
no better job. I cook, clean and look after my husband.  He slices
the vegetables, I cook the food.
	"I would love to sing and perform.  But at the moment there
isn't room in my life and I plan to stay at home for at least another
year.  I won't go on the road again, but I am hoping to sing at one
place, maybe Las Vegas, and live here too."
	As our picture session continues, Celine is constantly whispering
in her husband's ear.  When they think they are out of eyesight, they
steal kisses ad hold hands.
	Despite their wealth, the couple does not have a vast staff. 
Their families often stay in their ten-bedroom house.  Rene said: "I
was only sorry that my two other sons were not able to be here for
the photographs.  Both Patrick, who is 33, and Jean-Pierre, 26, are away working." 
	They did, however, have Rene's daughter Anne-Marie, 23, at the
house for the weekend-and she is the cause of a double celebration. 
She got married last August and is expecting her first child in six
months, so Rene will become a father and grandfather in the same year.
	Children are a familiar sight at the Angelil household.  Celine
has 29 nephews and nieces.  Every year she sends them a toy catalogue,
and asks them to choose whatever they want for Christmas.  Rene's three
other children live in Montreal, but are regular visitors.  Their
father had been divorced for three years when he and Celine, whose
career he had nurtured since he was jut 12, revealed their love to
each other in 1998.  They kept it private, finally declaring their
love publicly in 1992, before marrying at Montreal's Notre Dame
Basilica in 1994.
	"My year off has been a wonderful opportunity to do things I
could never have done otherwise, " says Celine.  "At the beginning I
took Spanish lessons for five hours a day, which is something I have
always wanted to do.  Because II have been performing since I was 14,
it is the first normal life I have known as an adult.
	"I feel as if I have not had a life before now.  Showbusiness 
is not a normal existence, it's fake stuff.  When you are involved in
it you don't realize how far away you are getting from the things
that really count.  This is especially true when you have been raised
in a large family of 14 children with parents like I have, very down
-to-earth people, and then it's like, where is that little town where
I grew up?  Where is the home where we slept three of four children in
the same bed?
	"I had reached 32, had all this success, but all I craved was
some normality and a family.  I love life, seasons, nature, parents,
children, grandparents, family, true values, the smell of toast that
you make for yourself in the morning, my own little coffee, a kiss in
the morning, not room service in some a strange hotel.
	"Just being in your bathrobe until 2pm, or just having no
schedule, has been special to me in this last year.  It has been 
fantastic being so free and I am very lucky to have been able to make
that choice.  Not many people can and I thank God everyday."
	The happy couple is already planning a brother or sister for
Rene-Charles.  Another frozen sperm cell is on hold at the fertility
clinic, for when ever they feel the need to expand their family.
	Celine said: "WE feel like we want to have a second child,
but we are so overjoyed with Rene-Charles that we want to make the
most of him first.  We may wait three or four years."  She pauses for
a few seconds, then adds with a knowing smile: "Then again, maybe we won't wait at all!"


Interview: Phil Hall
Photos: Gerard Schachmes

Celine Says 'Oh, Boy!'

As wake-up calls go, this one was hard to beat. Thérèse Dion was asleep in her room at the five-star Hotel Le Bristol in Paris, where she had gone to film episodes of the cooking show she hosts on Canadian TV, when the phone rang at 7 a.m. on Jan. 25. On the line, more than 4,500 miles away at Palms West Hospital in Loxahatchee, Fla., the youngest of her 14 children, pop diva Celine Dion, was 18 hours into labor and literally seconds from giving birth. "I heard the baby's first cry live on the telephone," says an elated Thérèse, 73, who spoke to her daughter only briefly. "Celine told me, 'The baby is in good health, but the mother, she is tired.'"

As well she might have been. After years of publicly wishing for a child -- and enduring an intensive round of in vitro fertilization treatments to conceive -- Dion, 32, and her husband-manager, René Angélil, 59, finally welcomed 6-lb. 8-oz. René-Charles three weeks before his Valentine's Day due date.

"Everybody was just crying tears of joy," says Dion's obstetrician Dr. Ronald Ackerman, 48, who assisted in the cesarean section delivery performed by his partner Dr. Steven Pliskow, 37. "Nurses, doctors, experienced people -- there was not a dry eye in the room." Least of all those of the proud parents (who declined to release pictures of the newborn). "This was their dream," says record producer David Foster, a longtime friend. "It's bigger than any hit record, bigger than anything for them."

It was a long, hard labor

Dion had been relaxing at the couple's 10-bedroom mansion in nearby Jupiter when contractions began on Wednesday afternoon. After consulting Ackerman, the singer and her husband packed their black Mercedes 500 and drove to the hospital 40 minutes away. But the baby for whom they had waited so long wasn't ready to take the stage just yet. At one point Ackerman and Pliskow tried to induce the birth chemically, to no avail. "They gave it every chance to be a vaginal delivery," says maternity nurse Helene Schilian, who cared for Dion during her three-day hospital stay. "But at some point the baby just seemed to say, 'I'm tired, let me out.' " By 1 a.m. Thursday (up to 24 hours of labor is not unusual for a first-time birth), the doctors became concerned that the umbilical cord was in a position to damage the child and performed a cesarean section.

Throughout the birth Dion was "focused and calm," says Ackerman. "This is a lady with extreme focus and fortitude," adds Pliskow. After Angélil helped cut the cord, René-Charles was placed in his tearful mother's arms before being washed and wrapped in a hospital-issue blue-and-pink-striped blanket, topped with a knitted cap. Then Angélil and Dion's sister Linda, 41, who had also attended the birth, began the task of spreading the news. "The baby of the family had a baby!" sister Liette, 50, who lives in Montreal, exclaimed when she heard of the birth. "We were that much more excited because she so wanted to have a baby and the way she became pregnant was a miracle in itself."

The next morning Dion made some phone calls of her own ("I had a boy!" she announced to Manhattan fertility specialist Dr. Zev Rosenwaks, who had administered her IVF treatment back in May) and made a careful inventory of her new baby's features. "He has René's little feet, René's toes and the little ears of René," she told her mother over the phone. "He has my chin, though, and my hair color." Over the next couple of days the songstress never left her birthing suite, a green-and-peach-hued room with a bathroom, dining table and two foldout beds that Angélil and Linda occupied at night. Dion cooed softly to the baby in French ("Mon amour") and approached her mothering with the singular determination that earned her five Grammys and more than 100 million worldwide album sales in her singing career. "She took to nursing the baby like she'd had 12 others," says Schilian. "She handled that baby like a pro."

Proud papa changed diapers

For his part, "René was very attentive," Schilian adds. "He was up for every feeding during the night, making sure the baby got fed every three hours. He changed diapers." Whenever he did step out, the new father couldn't conceal his joy. After munching on a chili hot dog at the nearby Chicago Style Grille on Thursday, Angélil returned the next day with a signed photograph of his wife for the deli's owner Scott Verdung. At breakfast on Saturday at a local diner he tipped waitress Erla Simon, 18, $20 on a $20 check -- "The biggest tip I ever got!" she says. And staff at the nearby Babies R Us were struck with Angélil's happiness when he stopped by that same day for a bottle sterilizer, a nursing pillow and a baby car seat, which store clerk Mike Maldonado helped him install in his Mercedes. "You could tell he was a little nervous," says Maldonado, "a little anxious about making sure it was done right."

Maybe so. But when it comes to raising children, both Dion and Angélil have had plenty of practice. Dion dotes on her 32 nephews and nieces -- for whom she bankrolls annual Christmas toy shopping free-for-alls -- as well as the children of friends. "Even when a baby is crying or upset, as soon as she takes them in her arms they become quiet and happy," says her pal and Canadian press agent Francine Chaloult. "She knows how to hold a baby, cradle a baby, feed a baby, handle a baby." So does Angélil, who had his share of diaper duty while raising his three other children -- Patrick, 33, Jean-Pierre, 26, and Anne-Marie, 23 -- from two prior marriages. "If you want to know what kind of a parent René is, look at those children," says David Foster. "They're polite, nice, successful."

Their father had been divorced for three years when he and Dion, whose career he had nurtured since she was just 12, revealed their love to each other in 1988. Four years would pass before they admitted their relationship to the world. But there was nothing secretive about their 1994 wedding, a lavish affair with 500 guests at Montreal's Notre Dame Basilica. (Five years later the pair renewed their vows in an equally opulent Arab-themed ceremony, complete with live camels and belly dancers, in Las Vegas.) From the start, having children was a priority. "I never thought that my life would fall apart if I didn't have a child," Dion wrote in her book My Story, My Dream, published last October. "But even so, I was waiting for it, looking for it and making it part of my plans."

What the couple hadn't planned on was the need for artificial conception. In the spring of 1999 Angélil was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma on a lymph gland in his neck. Concerned about the potential side effects of the chemotherapy and radiation he would require, the couple froze some of his sperm for future use. Tests before freezing found that Angélil's sperm count was already too low for standard IVF treatments to be successful. So Dr. Ackerman suggested a procedure known as intracytoplasmic sperm injection -- using a single, isolated sperm cell to fertilize an egg, which is then placed in the uterus. For a time the couple focused their energy on Angélil's cancer treatment; they had already announced that beginning in 2000 Dion would take at least a year off from performing to "chill out and discover new things," as she put it -- including starting a family.

Then, last February, the couple met with fertility specialist Rosenwaks. Four months later, after undergoing a battery of drug treatments and invasive, sometimes painful procedures, Dion received the happy news. "Congratulations, lovers," Rosenwaks told them over the phone from Manhattan while Ackerman was by their side at their home. "You're pregnant, Celine."

Celine Dion has gone very quiet indeed. A year ago she ducked out of the public eye altogether, announcing that she was taking a break from her meteoric singing career, which had just reached its zenith with the top-selling record of all time, My Heart Will Go On, the theme song of the film Titanic. The reasons were that she desperately needed a break, she wanted to spend more time with her husband and manager Rene Angelil, 59, who had been battling cancer, and they were determined to try for a baby. Since then, we’ve had brief glimpses of the songbird, relaxing on the golf course, for example, and we knew that she was pregnant. But that was all. Here, we find a radiant Celine, 32, pictured in the seclusion of her fabulous home in Jupiter, Florida, happily awaiting the arrival – scheduled for Valentine’s Day! – of her baby boy. "I’ve felt like a different person almost from the start of my sabbatical," beams the Canadian songbird from her Florida home. "I really was in quite a state, so first of all, I had to get rid of all the stress and stage fright that had built up in my system, and, for the first time, just forget about my voice, which I’d been dependent on for half my life. Once I’d managed that, I let myself gently slide into a kind of lethargy. Out went the singing exercises, suddenly I was free. No planning, no planes, no jetlag, no crowds and no concerts. I used to hate mornings and would always get up late, but suddenly I was springing out of bed early, smelling the flowers and listening to the birds." Celine has made no secret of her and Rene’s desire to have a baby, and her face glows as she remembers finding out that she was pregnant. "I re-live that moment every day when I feel my little boy move," she recalls. "It was June 8, 2000, and Dr Ackerman came to my house. I wasn’t expecting him that day. Rene joined us in the kitchen. On the other end of the phone line was my other doctor, Dr Rosenwaks. Together, the two doctors said, ‘Congratulations, lovebirds!’. Rene and I held each other for a long time, laughing and crying. Two weeks later, we saw our baby’s heart beat for the first time, at 142 beats a minute. Three months later, his little heart was going stronger, at 162 beats per minute. We made a recording which we listened to every night before going to sleep. We knew that whatever happened, life had already triumphed." But what everyone wants to know is: Will Celine return to performing after the birth of her son? "I haven’t done singing exercises for 12 months," she laughs. "I know that in a year, I’ll be back, with a new album, with film projects, but also with a little boy who’ll perhaps be called René... and nothing in my life will be the same again."

She Finally Has It All

That's no exaggeration: Today, Celine Dion can add mother-to-be to her already bursting roster of reasons to be happy (world-famous superstar and red-hot marriage are two of the others). Ever since she was a girl growing up in Quebec as the youngest of 14 children, this died-in-the-wool romantic has been dreaming of having a child. But when her husband René Angélil was diagnosed with skin cancer in 1999, she feared not only for his life, but also for the possibility of their ever having a baby together. Here, in an excerpt from her new autobiography, Celine remembers the day her doctor came to her house to deliver the most important news she'd ever had.

When my gynecologist, Dr. Ronald Ackerman, arrived at our Florida home that morning, I was surprised, since I hadn't been expecting him. Then, just after he walked in, my fertility specialist, Dr. Zev Rosenwalks, called. He asked me what I was doing.

"Eating lunch."
"What are you having?"
"Toast, pâté, tea."
"What about René?"
"I think he's in his office."
"And you?"
"In the kitchen, with Dr. Ackerman."
"Better get René. I want to talk to both of you together, in the same room."
I called René. I had a really hard time trying not to sound nervous and excited, because I knew that the doctor had really, really big news for us. René arrived in the kitchen, not suspecting a thing. "Are you there, René?" asked Dr. Rosenwaks (the phone was on speaker).

"Yes!"
"Are you there too, Ronald?"
"Yes, go ahead!"
"Congratulations, lovers!"

I immediately saw my love's eyes fill with tears. He came close to me, took me in his arms and held me tight.
"You're pregnant, Celine," Zev and Ronald kept saying.

For quite a while after that, René and I stood quietly, just holding each other, in the middle of the kitchen. This dream, which I'd practically forbidden myself from having for so long because it seemed too fragile, was now going to be realized. I was at last going to have a baby with the man I love.

Excerpt from Celine Dion: My Story, My Dream, by Celine Dion (HarperCollins)

"She's doing great," says Dr. Zev Rosenwaks, the Manhattan fertility specialist who successfully completed Celine Dion's in vitro fertilization in May. Now nearly five months pregnant, Dion is healthy, gaining weight and supremely happy, says Rosenwaks. And a recent ultrasound confirms that "the baby is growing beautifully."

The silky-throated pop diva spent the summer and early fall at her home near Montreal, where her pregnancy is monitored by a local obstetrician. But Rosenwaks, 54, says he speaks to her often and expects her to go to term, delivering a single baby -- not multiples as had initially seemed possible -- in mid-February. "Once an IVF pregnancy is established," he points out, "it's a natural pregnancy and proceeds as every other pregnancy."

Dion, 32, and her husband-manager, René Angélil, 58, have yet to decide if the blessed event will take place in Montreal or in Jupiter, Fla., where they usually winter at their 10-bedroom estate. The couple reportedly spent much of the summer planning a $20 million renovation of the $8 million Gagnon Island mansion they bought recently, near their current home in Rosemere, Que. The refurbished house will include -- surprise! -- a nursery next to the master bedroom. In August, Dion attended the Montreal wedding of Angélil's daughter Anne-Marie, 23, from a previous marriage. Dion has hardly indulged her passion for golf with Angélil -- whose metastatic skin cancer, first diagnosed in 1999, remains in remission. Mostly, says Rosenwaks, the pop queen is "just enjoying the moment and, in essence, paying attention to her pregnancy." She has been learning Spanish, devouring baby books, humming lullabies, making endless lists of possible baby names and awaiting publication of her autobiography, Celine Dion: My Story, My Dream, due this month from HarperCollins.

Having life "growing in me," says Dion (with her husband), is "the proof that love exists." Much of her rags-to-riches story is well-known: how the youngest of 14 children born to poor, music-loving parents in the small, French-speaking town of Charlemagne, Quebec, began her music career in 1980 at the age of 12. That she placed her future and her trust in the hands of manager René Angélil, 26 years her senior, and became a star. That she is one of the bestselling female singers in history, that she has earned five Grammies. And how, along the way, Dion and Angélil finally yielded to the growing knowledge that their relationship was more than that of manager and star.

But in her new book, Dion reveals for the first time some of the most intimate details of her climb to the top. Here, in this exclusive excerpt, she tells the real story of her passion for Angélil, his courageous battle against cancer and their deep desire to have a child.

The first time I met the man who would ultimately occupy such an important place in my career, life and heart, René Angélil was standing behind his desk in his office in Quebec City. He was extremely polite -- "a gentleman" as my mother put it -- but he wasn't smiling. He asked us to sit down, but he remained standing. He seemed to address my mother more than me. He said he'd heard my demos and thought my voice was very beautiful. Suddenly, I felt intimidated. Finally, he sat down and asked me if I wanted to sing for him -- right there, without music. My mother, too, was looking at me. There was a silence that lasted for a century. Then Maman said, "She's really not used to doing it, like that, without a mike."

René handed me an enormous pen and said in a very gentle voice: "Let's say that's your mike, okay?"

He still wasn't smiling, but his voice had a soothing sweetness, very warm, very calming.

I stood up and put myself in front of the office door, to get as much space in front of me as possible. My mother had to turn around to see me. I brought the pen to my lips and began singing:

Dans un grand jardin enchanté
Tout a coup je me suis retrouvée

When I finished, it was my turn to wait through a century of silence. René wiped his eyes. Then, as if we hadn't seen anything, he said, "You made me cry." I still didn't really know him, but I felt that that said everything.

From then on, René was part of the family. My sisters and mother thought he was really handsome. He was always very elegant. And he had a mysterious, exotic side to him, like a quiet seducer, sure of himself. In the beginning, when he came to the house, he talked for hours about everything and nothing, except what counted for me. Then, before leaving, always discreetly, he would get serious. The first time, he had his coat on when he said to my parents, "If you put your faith in me, I can guarantee that your daughter will be an important star in Quebec and France within five years."

Ultimately, it took only two years for Dion's romantic brand of pop -- which she sang in her native French -- to win her acclaim in Quebec and France. But even as her star was rising, the teenage singer yearned for something she couldn't have.

For the first time in my life, I was hiding something from René. I must have told him at least a hundred times that he was dear to my heart, but I never dared tell him that I dreamed of him every night: He would come to my bed to take me away to a desert island where we made love. I never told him about the torrid movies that he was starring in more and more often.

I'd found -- where, I don't know -- a photo of him that I gazed at a thousand times a day and that I covered with kisses at night, in my bed. I rubbed it against my cheek. It slipped onto my neck like a kiss and slid onto my shoulders. Before I fell asleep, I slid it under the pillow, out of fear that my mother, who shared a room with me, would find it.

One morning I woke up with the photo of my love right in view on the pillow, next to my head. My mother had already gotten up, washed, dressed and even pulled open the curtains. She must have seen it. I was scared stiff that she'd talk to René and tell him that I was fixated on him and that he'd better be careful if he didn't want any trouble from her.

But if she did see that precious photo, she never said anything about it. She must have figured that I was bound to get over it, that sooner or later I'd meet a boy of my age, fall in love and get married.

Meanwhile, I continued to go to sleep with René's photo against my cheek, against my neck. I wore out several of them. Some days I felt horribly alone. I was locked up in this love about which I couldn't speak.

And I knew very well that I wouldn't get over it. I had become a woman, I'd be 18 soon, and I wanted René to take me in his arms, to kiss me and make love to me. "But maybe he doesn't see any of it," I told myself. "Maybe he simply isn't interested in me."

I tried to understand why I loved him so. I thought he was handsome. I loved his soft eyes, his gestures, his voice, the color of his skin, his hands, his cologne, the quiet strength that came from him, his calmness, the authority that he exercised over everyone, even my parents, even over the executives at the record companies. I loved his passion for gambling, and his laugh, and his ways of analyzing situations, of making decisions -- above all, of course, the way he looked at me, the confidence he gave me, and his hopes for my future.

I had a surge of hope when the gossip magazines said that his wife Anne-Renée had asked for a divorce, which René had granted. But I quickly realized that he was devastated by what he considered an irreparable failure on his part. "He still loves her," I told myself. "She can still cause him pain."

I would have so much love to be able to make him feel the pain of love. To be able to console him. To hear him say that he loved me, that he was suffering because of me.

Angélil tried to keep his distance from his infatuated client, but as her French-language hits made her the object of international fascination, rumors about their relationship began to filter into Canadian tabloids.

René had a lot of experience, but at the time he acted like a scared adolescent, a hundred times more intimidated than he would have been in front of a woman of his age. He was afraid of what people would say, afraid to hurt me, afraid that when I was 30 I'd find myself with a man of 56.

But I knew I had him. And I bided my time. Finally it came.

It was in Dublin, on that unforgettable day of April 30, 1988, the evening of the Eurovision competition in which, though French-Canadian, I was there to represent the Swiss! With a song written by an Italian and a Turk.

In the end, I won by just one point. As I went to get my prize, I dissolved into tears. I made my thank-yous more or less coherently and left the stage almost at a run. When I found René, I threw myself into his arms and, still crying, hugged him very hard and kissed him on the neck. I was at the height of happiness.

He let it happen. He was laughing.

Later that night, I was seated at the head of the bed, legs folded under the covers. I was happy about being alone with the man I loved. And I had a very precise plan.

I realized that he'd stopped talking, that we were enveloped by silence. He stayed there, sitting on the arm of the chair, very near my bed, without saying a word. I looked at him with my mature woman's smile. I think that at that moment he realized that I hadn't been listening to him for a while and that I was thinking of other things. He lowered his eyes. I could feel that I'd affected him. Directly in his heart. He got up, he backed toward the door two or three steps, as if to escape my hold over him, and said goodnight.

I couldn't let it go like that.

He'd already opened the door. I got off the bed and went up to him, I pressed against him. "You haven't kissed me, René Angélil."

I took his head in my hands and I kissed him on the lips. I hung from his neck. He held me tight, the door still opened behind him. Then he pulled apart my arms. He fled to his room. I stayed there for a moment all alone, my heart beating, trembling, flabbergasted.

I knew that I'd won. That flight was an admission of it.

I grabbed the telephone and called his room to tell him: "If you don't come back here immediately, I'm going to go knock on your door."

But there was no answer.

It was he who called me several minutes later from the lobby of the hotel. To ask if I was all right. And then he told me: "If you really want to, I'll be the first."

And I answered him: "You'll be the first. And the only."