How a Philly Ob-Gyn Ended Up Delivering a Baby Gorilla
“For the most part, I was in the moment, doing what I do every day.”
Last Friday, at 10:30 a.m., ob-gyn Rebekah McCurdy was seeing patients in her office when she got the call. Hello, said the voice on the line. It’s us. We’re thinking of doing a C-section, and we’re ready to put her under anesthesia. Weird, thought McCurdy. She wasn’t covering deliveries that morning, and in any case, she didn’t have any C-sections scheduled. “Who is this?” she said.
“It’s the zoo,” said the voice. “It’s for Kira.”
McCurdy dropped everything and ran to her car. A few hours later, she was delivering a baby gorilla into the world.
Philadelphia Zoo has a long history of raising great apes: In 1928, it became the first American zoo to successfully breed both chimpanzees orangutans. In 2009,
