US:The new baby entering the world today in New Orleans will most definitely not be called Katrina. That much is guaranteed, and when he or she is old enough to ask how he or she got here, the parents will have quite a story to tell.
The child being born by Caesarean section today to Rebekah and Glen Markham is counted as one of the earliest survivors of Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged New Orleans some 18 months before his or her birth. The Markhams do not know the baby's gender.
When the hurricane hit, their baby was a frozen embryo at a fertility treatment centre at Lakeland hospital in eastern New Orleans, a part of the city that was severely affected by flooding. When the power went out, the embryo that would grow into the Markhams' baby - and the hopes of having a family for hundreds of other couples - was put at immediate risk.
The embryos, the products of in-vitro fertilisation, were stored at the hospital for couples seeking to add to their families at a later date after a successful treatment, or for those whose earlier attempts to have a child had failed. There were 1,200 such embryos at the hospital.
At the time, the prospect of losing their stored embryos did not even occur to the couple. Other concerns were too pressing. Ms Markham (32), a physiotherapist, had fled New Orleans with the couple's son, Witt, who was also conceived following fertility treatment.
Mr Markham (42), a detective with the New Orleans police force, stayed on the job where he was assigned to stop looters.
But the hospital had already contacted Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Bianco, and was preparing a rescue plan for the stored embryos. "Thank the Lord they thought about them," Ms Markham told the Times-Picayune newspaper. But for that intervention, the Markhams might never had had their baby.
Friends have suggested they call their baby Harry Cane, or Cat Five - for the magnitude of storm that hit New Orleans. Mr Markham is thinking about Breeze, if it is a girl.
The hospital's rescue plan began two days before Katrina made landfall. At the fertility clinic housed on its premises, technicians moved the embryos, stored in individually labelled vials for each family, into four large canisters of liquid nitrogen. The technicians then topped off those tanks with additional nitrogen, and moved the embryos to the third floor of the hospital.
Even if the waters rose, the embryos would remain dry. But Katrina's 8ft surge of water knocked out the electricity supply for the hospital. While the embryos inside the tanks might have survived in an air-conditioned room, doctors knew they would not last long in the subtropical temperatures. The hospital arranged for state troopers and visiting police from Illinois to rescue the embryos. The police, accompanied by two doctors, set out in trucks, towing flat-bottomed boats behind them.
The Markhams' baby will be the second delivery from the rescued embryos. A Mississippi couple had twins last month.
"This is something the baby will always be able to tell, about his rescue and birth," Ms Markham said. "People like to hear good from something so devastating."
- (Guardian service)