Celine Preggers - Frozen Embryo

MONTREAL - Celine Dion, known for belting out pop songs with window-rattling power, will be fine-tuning her repertoire of lullabyes with the news Tuesday that she's pregnant with her second child. It's an arrival Dion mused about almost nine years ago when she was expecting her first baby, Rene-Charles.

When Rene-Charles was conceived through in vitro fertilization at a world-renowned New York clinic, Dion told interviewers at the time that a sibling was already in the works. The pop megastar and her husband, Rene Angelil, got the good news of the latest infant on Monday after undergoing another round of fertility treatments.
"Celine is very, very happy," Murielle Blondeau, a spokeswoman for Dion, told The Canadian Press on Tuesday when she confirmed the pregnancy.
"Celine and Rene are full of joy. It's been a big dream for Celine to have a second child."

The sex of the child isn't known yet nor was it immediately clear that the offspring is the same embryo that Dion spoke of in a television interview in 2000.
At that time, Dion said: "I have a twin. It is called a laboratory twin".
"I do not know if it is good forever but I think it lasts a long time. I will go get it (someday), that's for sure."

Although Rene-Charles and the new baby are siblings, fertility experts say they are not twins. Identical twins are created from a single embryo that splits in the womb while fraternal twins come from different embryos that are carried at the same time. Dr. Seang Lin Tan, a world-renowned fertility expert at the McGill University Reproductive Centre in Montreal, said there are documented cases where frozen embryos have been successfully used after two decades.
"There have been babies born who are healthy after the embryos have been frozen for 20 years," he said.

Angelil had suggested at a ceremony in August 2008 that the couple would try for another child after Dion's world-spanning "Taking Chances" tour ended. That run of concerts marked Dion's return to the road after a five-year gig in Las Vegas.

Dion's love of children is well known. The youngest of 14 children, she dotes on Rene-Charles, who started private school in Florida this week. She is also a spokeswoman for a Montreal children's hospital where she has greeted the little patients. Dion's first pregnancy was well-documented, unlike that of fellow music megastar Shania Twain, who virtually disappeared while waiting to give birth around the same time. The revelation that Dion was pregnant with Rene-Charles followed a jaw-dropping announcement that she would retire from performing to have a family.

She gave interviews about her pregnancy in which she chatted about how the frozen eggs might one day become a "brother or sister" to Rene-Charles, and she appeared in a series of photos showcasing her protruding belly. Dion has said that she and her husband turned to medical science to help conceive because Angelil had been diagnosed with cancer in 1999. After a neck tumour was removed, he was treated with radiation and chemotherapy which are known to affect fertility. Angelil's cancer went into remission.

Dr. Zev Rosenwaks, who counselled the couple on their fertility options, told The Canadian Press in a 2000 interview that Dion had an intracytoplasmic sperm injection, in which a single sperm is injected into the egg. Rosenwaks, who works with the Weill Cornell fertility clinic, said in the interview that Angelil had previously frozen his sperm. The second fertilized egg was frozen five days after conception and stored at the New York clinic, Dion said in the television interview.
Tan said there is no real concern about Dion giving birth at age 41 and he noted the embryos were also frozen when she was much younger. He said he hopes Dion's pregnancy will draw attention to in vitro fertilization.
"Although we hear success stories like Celine Dion, the result of IVF is still not as good as we would like it to be," he said, adding more research is needed so that better treatments can be offered.
"Apparently when she got pregnant the first time, the popularity of in vitro in Canada went up quite a bit," he said.