Thursday, October 1, 2026
An eight pound, twelve ounce boy has the distinction of being the first baby born at Mercy Medical Center 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 her 37-year-old husband Thomas. The Farmingdale couple have a daughter, Keira Marie, who 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 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 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.
