Rebekah Markham holds her newborn son Noah Benton Markham, born from a frozen embryo rescued in the wake of Katrina flooding. Behind them are her husband, Glen, and their 2-year-old son Witt. The family is shown during a news conference Tuesday at St. Tammany Parish Hospital in Covington, La.

COVINGTON, LA. ? Rescued from a great flood while he was just a frozen embryo in liquid nitrogen, a baby boy entered the world Tuesday and was named after the most famous flood survivor of them all: Noah.

Noah Benton Markham – 8 pounds, 6 1/2 ounces – was born to 32-year-old Rebekah Markham by Caesarean section after growing from an embryo that nearly defrosted in a sweltering hospital during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“All babies are miracles. But we have some special miracles,” said Wanda Stogner, one of Rebekah’s cousins.

Relatives gathered around New Orleans police officer Glen Markham as the proud 42-year-old father carried the tiny blanket-wrapped bundle topped by a pink-and-blue cap out of the operating room at St. Tammany Parish Hospital. For a few seconds he tried to make them guess whether the baby was a boy or a girl.

Then he announced, “It’s a boy!” to an eruption of cheers and applause.

Two weeks after Katrina hit, law officers used flat-bottom boats to rescue the Markhams’ embryos and some 1,400 other ones stored in tanks of coolant at New Orleans’ Lakeland Hospital.

The tanks had been topped off with liquid nitrogen and moved from the first floor to the third as the storm drew near, but the hurricane swamped the hospital with 8 feet of water and knocked out the electricity.

“That is the best name!” said Ramon Pyrzak, lab director for the Fertility Institute of New Orleans, where the Markhams created embryos from their sperm and eggs after nearly a decade of inability to have a baby.

Noah’s older brother, 2-year-old Glen Witter “Witt” Markham Jr., whose embryo was created at the same time as Noah’s but implanted immediately in 2003, stood on his mother’s hospital bed and leaned forward to give the baby a gentle kiss.

“So soft!” Witt said.