Fort Campbell baby shower update

Oprah threw the biggest baby shower in world for 640 very pregnant moms at the Fort Campbell Army Base in October 2004. Some of the moms are soldiers and others are married to soldiers. It was quite a party. Since then, business at Fort Campbell's maternity ward has been booming. Right after Operation Baby Shower was accomplished, a bundle of sweet little soldiers were welcomed into the world: Cannon Bo, Sidney Lee, Elijah Alexander Matthew Luna, Mariah, Elijah and baby McCala, who was born during the show! One of the new moms thanked Oprah: "For somebody to think of the wives, it was very, very unbelievable."

Special thanks to The Oakland Manor for hosting all the new Fort Campbell moms!

The Oakland Manor
9210 Newstead Rd
Hopkinsville, KY
(502) 885-6400
Celine talks about motherhood

Celine Dion loves everything about her son, René-Charles, and knows she's spoiling him. She says she and her husband, René, regularly take René-Charles to Chuck E. Cheese and on miniature golf outings. René and René-Charles especially like to golf together. "You know what he does," René says. "He hits the ball and then he starts running. He runs after it. And he hits it again and he runs again. And every time when we finish, he tells me, 'Wasn't it a great day, Dad?'"

"My mother called him 'little prince,'" Celine said. "Actually, we have an extravagant life, but we're trying to live as normal as possible." But Celine says she isn't the only one who dotes on René-Charles! "First of all, my mother's supposed to help me. She raised 14 children. She's supposed to constantly ask me, 'When he is going to stop using a bottle? When are you going to send him to school?' She's doing the opposite. She says, 'He's a baby. When you cut the bottle, your baby's gone.'"
Zoe, the miracle baby

Eric and Tammy Kose wanted children desperately. But Tammy's lupus made that dream seem unlikely. After a devastating miscarriage, Tammy was thrilled to learn she was pregnant with a little girl. "I was ecstatic and I had a very positive outlook on the pregnancy," Tammy says. "And I think I'm probably the only one that did. Everybody was just so fearful."

After closely monitoring the pregnancy for several weeks, doctors told Eric and Tammy that their baby was in grave danger, and that, though the pregnancy would not be able to go to term, if she were born now her chance of survival was zero percent. The only other option was to try to get Tammy to 27 weeks of pregnancy and then deliver the baby. But even this only offered a less than five percent chance of survival.

Knowing these risks, Tammy and Eric decided to wait as long as possible to allow the baby time to develop. "I prepared myself to give birth to a dead baby," Tammy says. "She was either going to die inside of me and I would still have to give birth, or I was going to be rushed for an emergency delivery."

After making it to 27 weeks, the doctors finally performed a C-section. "She was this little 9-inch thing," Tammy says. "And the first thing I said is, 'Is she alive? Is she breathing?' And the doctor reassured me she was." However, Zoe weighed just 10.8 ounces—smaller than a Barbie doll!—and is the third-smallest baby to survive in the United States and the ninth-smallest baby to survive in the world. Now, nine months later, Zoe weighs eight and a half pounds and is doing great.
Gina Morris's two sets of twins

In the summer of 2004, Gina Morris received a birthday present she will never forget. Even though Gina had been implanted with two separate embryos, nature took over and split each to form two identical boys and two identical girls. In a 1-in-25-million chance, at around 4 in the morning of her 34th birthday, Gina Morris gave birth to two sets of identical twins. Anna Rose, Ella Kathleen, James Russell and Robert Wayne were born at 29 weeks, and each weighed between 2 to 4 pounds.
Sarah Smith's twin conquer cancer

When Eric and Sarah Smith met in Aspen eight years ago, it was love at first sight. Eric and Sarah quickly began planning their future together and dreamed of starting a family. But in November 2002, just four months after their romantic wedding, Eric was diagnosed with epithelioid sarcoma, a very rare and aggressive form of cancer. The cancer was already highly developed, and the prognosis was terminal.

Despite this, Eric and Sarah were convinced that he could beat the disease, but were worried the powerful chemotherapy would ruin their dreams of having children. Eric refused to start his treatment until he was able to freeze his sperm. "We did it," Sarah says, "with the entire intention that he was going to beat this and our love was going to save him and that we would have a family together." But after an agonizing four months in and out of the hospital, Eric finally lost his battle.

After his death, Sarah was determined to carry out their dream of having children. "Eric and I discussed this before he died," she says, "and he had actually left me, in his will, the sperm that was frozen, to make sure I wouldn't have any complications moving forward with this dream." When Sarah found a willing doctor, she became the first woman in Colorado history to receive in vitro fertilization with her dead husband's frozen sperm. After the first attempt at in vitro, Sarah got the miraculous news that she was pregnant with twins, Braden Harper and Shae Curran. "I said, 'We did it, baby. We beat cancer.' It took so much of our future. But it wasn't able to take everything."n 2 to 4 pounds.
Celine Dion

Now that their own miracle baby René-Charles isn't really a baby anymore, are Celine and René thinking about adding to their family?

"We want to. Believe it or not, we needed help to have this one. We tried for six years before. I'm not going to tell the whole story again," says Celine. "But we have a little embryo in New York which was produced at the same time as René-Charles. To be honest with you, there's no way for me as a mom, knowing that this embryo is part of René and me and is waiting for us in this iceberg...I need to bring this baby to the sun. ... I have to give it a try. I have to go there after Vegas. I have to take a long break. I have to go back. Put this baby in my belly and give this baby a chance."
Celine Dion and photographer Anne Geddes

Celine and award-winning photographer Anne Geddes first met when a 9-year-old friend of Anne's, and huge Celine Dion fan, was dying of cancer. Anne heard Celine liked her work, so she asked Celine to write this special little girl a note. When Celine showed up at the hospital, this union began. Anne later took photos of René-Charles when he was just three weeks old. Celine and Anne then partnered to create this beautiful book featuring 80 photos of babies, some with Celine, and CD Miracle. It was labor of love for both.

Oprah: How do you get the babies to pose in the flowers?

Anne: Photographing flowers has always been one of my real loves, apart from the babies. So we photograph the flowers first and then we decide where we're going to put the babies and then cut the soft foam shapes and lay the babies in them. It's a little bit more complicated than that and in the computer we put them both together. ... When [the babies are] asleep, they're very supple. They like to be folded. It's like being back in the womb...you see it.

Celine: I'm telling you, doing this was like taking those babies so close to my skin, my neck, I could breathe them. Oh...I wanted to take all of them home!
Celine Dion performs

Celine performs "A Mother's Prayer," "A Beautiful Boy," and the title track of her new CD and book with Anne Geddes, "Miracle" for the audience.