Tai Shan when he was only a few months old. Photo by Peter Martin Photo.

Panda pregnancies are a fickle thing, a fact that weighed on the mind of many of the National Zoo’s panda staff in recent weeks. Though they knew that Mei Xiang may be pregnant, they also realized that she may not be. Since 2007, she’d suffered five pseudopregnancies, after all, leaving both staff and hopeful residents disappointed.

But last night, according to zoo officials, panda keeper Becky Malinsky was watching the Panda Cam from her home near the zoo when she first heard the distinctive squawking made by newborn cubs. Within the hour, the zoo’s panda staff—many of whom kept a close watch on mother Mei Xiang over the Panda Cam—hustled into the zoo’s Panda House to verify the good news. It was only after the team reviewed video of the night that they could pinpoint exactly when Mei Xiang gave birth to the zoo’s first cub since Tai Shan—10:46 p.m.

And though zoo officials said today at a press conference that they’ve only caught fleeting glimpses of the new cub on the cameras, it’s seems to be doing well. “It’s moving and doing great,” said Nicole MacCorkle, a panda keeper. “It’s doing everything that Tai Shan did, it’s doing everything that we’d expect a healthy panda cub be be doing.”

For the next three weeks, though, zoo staff will be keeping a close eye on Mei Xiang and the cub, though from a distance. In the wild, they said, pandas like seclusion, and it’s only after a few weeks that the mother may venture off from its new offspring. When that happens, panda keepers will swoop in for a quick exam, and they expect to know the panda’s gender within four to six weeks.

As for an introduction to the public, zoo staff said that the earliest that the new cub could go on display is 2013, though they caution against hoping for too much too soon. And as they did with Tai Shan, they’ll be sticking to the Chinese tradition of waiting 100 days before naming it. According to Dennis Kelly, the zoo’s director, they again hope to leave the new cub’s name up to the a public vote.