Sextuplet teens mark new infant care unit

The new neonatal intensive care unit at Stony Brook Long Island Children’s Hospital will be unveiled Tuesday by some of the University Medical Center’s alumni -- nine of them.

The Boniello sextuplets and the Eden triplets will celebrate the grand opening of the state’s only all-private-room NICU and the hospital’s new labor and delivery suite.

The new neonatal facility increases the hospital’s number of beds from 40 to 46, with more than twice the amount of clinical space as the existing unit. The children’s hospital opened as part of the medical center in June 2010.

When they were born 14 years ago, the Boniello sextuplets, born to Rocco and Beverly Boniello of Williston Park, were only the third surviving set of sextuplets in the nation.

The parents chose to deliver Trifon, Olivia, Sabrina, Gerald, Sophia and Stella at Stony Brook because the hospital specialized in high-risk births. After their birth, then university president Shirley Strum Kenny pledged scholarships to all six if they met the admission requirements.

The current  president, Samuel Stanley, will meet the Boniellos for the first time and renew Kenny’s original pledge, according to the university.

The Eden triplets — Sophie, Lochlan, and Jess — were born July 1 and were recently discharged.