'IT SEEMS quite strange having two children born in different millenniums', said mum Viv Case, of Sampford Courtenay, whose baby Amelia was the first to be delivered at Okehampton District Hospital this century.

Amelia's brother, Matthew, will be three in March yet their birth dates seem a world apart.

'We never planned a millennium baby but it just happened like that,' said Mrs Case. 'It is quite nice really to start the new millennium with a new baby.'

Amelia was 6lb 3ozs and nine days early but is putting on weight fast: 'She's like a little barrel,' said her mum.

Mrs Case is full of praise for Okehampton District Hospital's baby unit where Matthew was also born.

'I have really bad pregnancies and because I am so ill I never put on any weight,' she said. 'But everyone thought the baby was small so they kept saying I would have to go to Exeter to have the baby.'

In the end Mrs Case did not need specialist care and got her wish to have Amelia at Okehampton.

'All the midwives are brilliant and helpful and there is always somebody there when you need them.'

She said because the hospital was a lot smaller people got individual attention and the atmosphere was very relaxed.

'It is such a lovely place and the staff deserve full credit for what they do,' she said.