Mercy Announces First Baby of 2013

A 6-pound, 8-ounce boy has the distinction of being the first baby born at Mercy Medical Center in 2013.

Christopher Elijah Barnes, delivered at 10:16 a.m. on New Year’s Day, is the first child for 41-year-old Felicia Barnes of Brooklyn and her 39-year-old husband, Wayne.

Christopher will have plenty of company as a 2013 “Mercy Baby," with more than 1,200 births expected at the hospital in the next 12 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.

With obstetric, anesthesia, neonatal and pediatric physician specialists on site in its labor and delivery and maternity areas around-the-clock, Mercy was ranked as one of New York’s best hospitals in 2012 by U.S. News & World Report, and its nursing services earned the coveted Pathway to Excellence designation from the American Nurses Credentialing Center.

The parents of all of 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.

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.