Celine's Dream Comes True

January 25, 2001 -- Having the No. 1 song in the world was nice, but Celine Dion fulfilled her life dream early this morning when she gave birth to her first child.

The baby boy, René-Charles, was due on Valentine's Day but was apparently as eager as his mother, arriving three weeks early at 1 a.m. in Palm Beach, Fla., where the French Canadian singer has a home.

Dion's press secretary, Francine Chaloult, released a short statement saying, "Celine Dion and [husband-manager] René Angelil have the great joy of announcing to you that their son was born during the night of Jan. 25. The mother and the baby, which weighs 6 pounds and three ounces, are doing just great and are in perfect health."

"It is extraordinary. She is doing great," one of Dion's sisters, Claudette, told the RDI all-news channel.

The couple had been trying to have a baby for years and eventually used in vitro fertilization last year to conceive the baby. The singer underwent two small operations in May at a New York fertility clinic to improve her chances of becoming pregnant.

Last month, Dion said in a televised interview that she had a second in vitro fertilized embryo stored at a New York fertility clinic and revealed she hopes one day to give her soon-to-be-born son a "twin." In the 90-minute interview on Quebec's TVA television network, Dion said that the egg remains at a New York clinic, where it was frozen five days after conception.

Dion — whose fame swept the world with Titanic's theme song, "My Heart Will Go On," in 1998 — is on a three-year sabbatical from her singing career, last performing Dec. 31, 1999, in Montreal. The singer has said she could take up to four years before coming back to show business but has also suggested she might record another album in English and in French one year after her son is born.

Dion married Angelil — who has managed her career since she began singing as a teenager — in a glitzy celebration in Montreal in 1994. Angelil was diagnosed with skin cancer in 1999 but is currently in remission.

Reuters contributed to this report.