AREA'S FIRST BABY OF 2000 BORN TO JACKSON WOMAN

Bayley Leeann James wasn't supposed to be here until Wednesday, but she must have wanted to see the new millennium just like everyone else.

So at 4:47 a.m. Saturday, Bayley became the first baby of the new year, new decade, new century, new millennium born at Southeast Missouri Hospital in Cape Girardeau.

When Bayley's mother, Jessica, learned she was pregnant with a baby due in early January, she and her husband, Terry L. James, who live in Jackson, gave brief thought to it being born on Jan. 1.

"I didn't think about it long," Jessica said from a bed in the hospital's obstetrics ward. "I thought it would never happen to me."

But throughout New Year's Eve, which the Jameses spent with Terry's family, his father, Terry W. James, kept ticking off the hours.

"He'd say, 'It's only five more hours -til midnight. Get ready to have that baby,' " said Jessica, who works at Alliance Blue Cross/Blue Shield. She didn't tell anyone at the family gathering when she started feeling contractions about 10 p.m. After she and her husband got home about 12:30 a.m., the contractions got worse and they left for the hospital about 12:45.

About 3 a.m., the doctor realized the baby was breech and ordered a Caesarean section. Bayley was born at 4:47, weighing seven pounds, 12 ounces and measuring 19 inches long, said Terry, an employee at PJ's Trucking.

"It's really neat," said Jessica, 19, about having the county's first baby of the millennium. "It's something we can tell her about as she gets older."

When asked to look into the baby's future, Jessica sees cars -- race cars -- just like the one 20-year-old Terry drives. He races TJ's Racing Stuff No. 19.

Her 3-year-old daughter Kaylynn wants to race cars like daddy, Jessica said, and she expects Bayley to do the same.

"They'll be top women race car drivers," she said.