Community Corner

Baby Boy Is First Birth at Mercy Medical Center in 2012

Farmingdale couple has eight pound, 12-ounce healthy boy.

An eight pound, twelve ounce boy has the distinction of being the first baby born at in 2012.

Liam Thomas Gunther, delivered at 10:37 a.m. on Jan. 2, is the second child for 34-year-old Melissa Gunther and 37-year-old husband Thomas, of Farmingdale, whose daughter Keira Marie will be three years old in April.

Liam will have plenty of company as a 2012 “Mercy Baby,” with more than 1,200 births expected at the hospital in the next twelve months. Some 300 of those babies will be premature or sick infants who receive care in the hospital’s Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), the only facility on the south Shore of Nassau County to receive that designation from New York State.

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The parents of all of those newborns, as well as those of all babies born over the years at Mercy, have the opportunity to commemorate the care they and their infants received on the hospital’s  “Newborn Wall of Celebration” outside the NICU and newborn nursery.

The wall features a colorful rainbow motif, symbolizing hope, renewal and community, on which parents of babies born at Mercy over the past decades can place a small plaque with their child’s name and date of birth as a demonstration of gratitude for the work of the Mercy physicians, nurses and staff who nurtured and cared for them in their first days of life.

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The “Wall of Celebration” is a project of the Council of Leagues of Mercy. Parents wishing to donate should contact the Development Office at 516-705-2620. Proceeds will specifically benefit Mercy’s maternal child services.


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