WILLIAMSBURG, Ky. — At Knoxville hospitals on the night of Y2K, reporters waited anxiously for the first baby of 2000.
Dina and Kayla Durnil delivered.
"I was glad to get her out, I didn't care if she was the first one or not," Dina Durnil told 10News at the time.
Her daughter Kayla Durnil, 6 pounds 9 ounces, entered the world just after 1 a.m. at Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center on Jan. 1 – 20 years ago.
"We've always had bad luck and it seems like maybe this is the start of a new century, she's our good luck," Durnil said.
It turns out, she was.
Twenty years later, Dina Durnil said Kayla was the start of a better life for her and her siblings.
That tiny baby swaddled in pink now has a car payment.
"I am getting married. We own our home," Kayla Durnil said. "I ride horses now. I have my own vehicle now."
But for her mom, the first day of 2000 still feels like yesterday.
"It don't seem like it's been 20 years," she said.
Since then, life hasn't been all roses and balloons. Kayla battled health issues.
"To be honest with you, we didn't know how things were going to be with Kayla at first," Dina Durnil said.
But her mom kept those baby gifts and told Kayla her story: that she was special. She was the first baby of the new millennium, famous before she even opened her eyes.
"She wasn't even born yet and they had the news people downstairs wanting to come up and do an interview," Dina Durnil recalls.
But home with a newborn, Dina Durnil never saw the 10News story from that day, until a reporter pulled the old archive tape to show her Tuesday.
"I can't believe I forgot how little she was. And how cute she was," she said.
As she watched back the first moments of her millennium miracle, now all grown up.
