Frank Polk spent the morning of New Year’s Day sleeping on the floor at Natchez Community Hospital.

It was not the most comfortable spot on which to sleep, but Polk said he would not have had it any other way.

That spot was better than any luxury bed he could dream of because it was next to his first-born daughter, Serenity Alexis Polk and her mother Amber Rogers.

Born at 3:42 New Year’s morning at Natchez Community, Serenity is the first baby of 2007 for the Miss-Lou.

“I had been saying all along that I was going to have her on New Year’s Day,” Amber said from her hospital bed.

Scheduled to arrive on Jan. 2, Serenity arrived a day early and was welcomed with a laundry basket over-filled with diapers, new clothes, blankets and numerous other baby items.

“There is a little bit of everything,” Amber said.

As for Frank, none of the gifts and accolades mattered much.

As friends and family poured into the hospital room, Frank kept his eyes on his new daughter and a smile on his face.

From 9 p.m. Sunday to the time Serenity was born more than six hours later, Frank stood giving comfort to Amber and waiting to welcome Serenity into the world.

“He stood up the whole time and held my hand and told me when to breathe,” Amber said.

“Then when she was born, he cried,” Amber said. “This is his first little girl, so you know.”

Polk also has a son, but Serenity was Amber’s first child.

Approximately 10 hours later and across the highway, the Miss-Lou got its second baby New Year.

Jack Lamar Felter was the first baby of 2007 for Natchez Regional Hospital, but his entry into the world was rougher than one would hope for.

Felter spent Monday on oxygen and wasn’t up for too many photo shoots, nurses at the hospital said. But, he’ll be fine, his father Dewitt Felter said.

Dewitt and his wife Katherine have been trying to have a child for four years, he said, and Jack was enough to make the new year a good one.

The 9 pound baby came at 2:02 p.m., after about five hours of labor.

His due date was Christmas Day, not New Year’s, and Felter said he’d never really thought about the possibility of having the hospital’s first baby of the new year.

“We were supposed to induce (Tuesday),” Felter said.

“But he came today. (Katherine’s) birthday is New Year’s Eve, so it’s close.”