Scientists, keepers and veterinarians held their breath as giant panda Bai Yun was in labor on August 21, 1999. Watching on the remote camera, they waited anxiously for the cub’s first loud squawk. When it came, the whole room erupted in a huge sigh of relief, with smiles all around. Hua Mei had arrived!

From first seeing the tiny, squirming cub on a sonogram until witnessing her birth, the panda team was both ecstatic and nervous. Would Bai Yun, a first-time mother, know what to do with her impossibly tiny cub? If the cub needed to be hand raised, could we create just the right milk formula?

After all the excitement surrounding Hua Mei’s birth, what if she didn’t survive?

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