Joy for parents at birth of son after medical canister rescued from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

Published on Wednesday 17 January 2007 00:06

RESCUED as an embryo from a hospital flooded during the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005, Noah Markham was born by Caesarean section yesterday, to the delight of his parents.

When Katrina struck, the baby was one of 1,400 embryos frozen for storage in canisters of liquid nitrogen at a hospital in eastern New Orleans.

Rebekah Markham, 32, had been evacuated before the hurricane with her year-old son, Glen Witter "Witt" Markham jnr.

Her husband, Glen, a New Orleans police officer, stayed behind to work.

Mother and son actually escaped twice. The first time was to relatives about half an hour from their home, nestled among 40ft-tall pine trees in Covington, Louisiana. But the storm toppled trees and cut electricity across the south of the state.

Their first refuge became a poor place to care for a toddler who had celebrated his first birthday just ten days before the storm, so they went to Mrs Markham's sister's home, in central Louisiana.

A mobile phone text message - "R U OK?" - the day after the storm told her that her husband had survived.

He was stationed across the Mississippi River from flooded parts of the city. But the area had its own dangers.

One member of his squad was shot in the head on 29 August after confronting looters at a petrol station.

Mr Markham, 42, never got his wife's answer to his text query. His phone's battery was dead. "It was about two weeks before I found out that they were OK," he said.

It took longer than that to have time to think about the embryos. When Mrs Markham phoned, she learned that they had been rescued.

Dr Belinda "Sissy" Sartor of the Fertility Institute of New Orleans and the clinic's lab director, Roman Pyrzak, had led seven Illinois Conservation Police officers and three from Louisiana State Police on a rescue expedition to the facility in flat- bottomed boats brought from Illinois.

Mrs Markham explained her choice of name - provided the baby was a boy - "because God put it on his heart to build an ark".

The baby weighed 8lb 6oz. Doctors said he was in good health. Relatives gathered round as father Glen carried the baby downstairs to meet them.

For a few seconds he tried to make them guess whether the baby in the pink-and-blue striped cap was a boy or a girl, then he said: "It's a boy," to an eruption of cheers and applause.

His grandmother, Lezette Crosby, got on the telephone to another relative: "It's Noah, Noah, it's a boy."

Witt is also an in-vitro baby. His embryo was created at the same time as his brother's, but it was implanted immediately, while five others were frozen in case of miscarriage - and because the Markhams always wanted more than one child.

They are not sure whether they will have a third.

"I thought three would be the ideal number," Mrs Markham has said. But her medical problems have required rest for the first three months of each pregnancy. "And I was even more sick with this one than with Witt."