New Orleans – The baby album for Rebekah Markham’s soon-to-be-born child could include something extra special: photos of officers using flat-bottomed boats to rescue the youngster’s frozen embryo from a sweltering hospital in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Markham is about to give birth via cesarean section, nine months after being implanted with an embryo that nearly thawed when the flooded hospital lost electricity.
“It’s going to be exciting for the little baby, once he gets old enough to realize what it went through,” said Markham, a 32-year-old physical therapist whose husband, Glen, 42, is a New Orleans police officer. “Katrina’s history. A big part of history.”
The baby will be one of the first children to be born from the more than 1,400 embryos that were rescued from New Orleans’ Lakeland Hospital two weeks after the storm.
More than the Markhams are tickled.
“That is great! I’m going to call all our officers and tell them. They’ll be pretty excited,” said Lt. Eric Bumgarner, one of seven Illinois Conservation Police officers and three Louisiana state troopers who sloshed through floodwaters to remove the embryos. Bumgarner said he has often wondered what happened to the embryos: “One of these embryos could be the next president.”
The C-section is set for Jan. 16.
Because of fertility problems that afflicted both husband and wife, a clinic created embryos from her egg and his sperm in 2003.
Two were implanted immediately, and one grew into their first child – a boy who turned 1 just before Hurricane Katrina. The rest were stored in liquid-nitrogen tanks at about minus-320 degrees to be used as needed. The Markhams had always planned to have at least two children.
Their embryos, along with those belonging to hundreds of other couples, were kept at the Fertility Institute’s laboratory at the hospital. Two days before Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005, the clinic took steps to protect the embryos by topping off all its tanks with liquid nitrogen and moving them to the third floor.
But Katrina’s 8 feet of water knocked out the electricity, and the temperature climbed. Police officials were persuaded to make a rescue. The Markhams were too busy during Katrina to even think about the fate of the stored embryos, and they did not find out about the rescue until afterward.
