Katrina frozen embryo is a boy named Noah

ELIZABETH GLASSANOS/FP Original

It’s a boy:

COVINGTON, La. – Sixteen months after being rescued as a frozen embryo from a hospital flooded by Hurricane Katrina, Noah Benton Markham entered the world Tuesday morning and was greeted by his cheering family.

The 8 pound, 6½-ounce boy was born by Caesarean section at 7:23 a.m. CST at St. Tammany Hospital. He was in good shape, doctors said.

Before the procedure Rebekah and Glen Markham had decided that if their baby was a boy, he would be named after the biblical builder of the Ark. A girl would have been Hannah Mae — Hannah means “God has favored us.”

When Katrina slammed New Orleans, Louisiana’s governor had already put into motion a plan to rescue of a number of frozen embryos being stored in a local fertility treatment center.

The embryos were carried out by a team of troopers and policemen in four large liquid nitrogen containers, each of which held many separate vials. After a long wade into the flooded building,  juggling power outages and an entire city in lock down, they brought the embryos to safety. Noah’s the happy result of their foresight.