Rescued Hurricane Katrina embryo due today

GLEN and Rebekah Markham are a bit taken aback by the worldwide publicity surrounding their child, scheduled to arrive by Caesarean section today.

News outlets from Ireland to Singapore are enthralled with the story of officers using flat-bottomed boats to rescue the child’s frozen embryo from a sweltering hospital in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The couple expected that maybe the story would show up in a local newspaper, and provide a page for the baby’s scrapbook.

“We never expected this much attention,” Ms Markham said on Sunday.

Preparations have been hampered by the fact that Mr Markham can’t lift much, or even install the baby car seat. Mr Markham, a New Orleans police officer, has been on disability since December 3 when he wrenched his back wrestling a wanted man to the ground.

“We haven’t even picked out a name yet,” Ms Markham said.

They’ve ruled out Katrina. Her husband’s choices include Duke and Nitro.

“Nitro could be liquid nitrogen, because that’s what saved him,” he said. “For a girl, I like Breeze.”

When the storm hit, Mr Markham was assigned to the west bank of New Orleans, which didn’t flood. Most of his time was spent preventing looting.

However, the five frozen embryos that held the couple’s chance to give their son, Witt, a brother or sister were at a hospital which got some of the worst flooding.

Weeks after the storm, Ms Markham was afraid her embryos were gone. The embryos were among 1,400 frozen in canisters of liquid nitrogen at a hospital that housed one of the two labs.

The canisters can keep their contents frozen for weeks, but they’re designed for use in an air-conditioned room, not a building where temperatures were soaring during a hot September without any electricity.

The Markhams’ relief at learning the embryos were safe was far more than just knowing they wouldn’t have to pay another $12,000 (€9,273) for a second round of in-vitro fertilisation.

“We see our little boy — we see what the potential of those little embryos is,” Ms Markham said.

“It meant more to us than a few cells in a hospital.

“Witt is all boy, all energy, all two-year-old. His favourite word is ‘No!’ Close behind is ‘tractor’, his green plastic, battery-powered model, on which he zips around the yard, between 40-foot-tall trees. At two, he doesn’t understand that he’s about to get a lot of competition for his parents’ attention.

It will be good for him, the Markhams said. They’ll probably have him choose the baby’s name, putting their picks into a hat, and having Witt pull out one for a boy and one for a girl.