Free The last lecture by Randy Pausch

called “placenta abrupta.” With the placenta in such distress, the life support for the fetus was giving out. They don’t need to tell you how serious this is. Jai’s health and the viability of our baby were at great risk.
    For weeks, the pregnancy hadn’t been going smoothly. Jai could hardly feel the baby kicking. She wasn’t gaining enough weight. Knowing how crucial it is for people to be aggressive about their medical care, I had insisted that she be given another ultrasound. That’s when doctors realized Jai’s placenta wasn’t operating efficiently. The baby wasn’t thriving. And so doctors gave Jai a steroid shot to stimulate the development of the baby’s lungs.
    It was all worrisome. But now, here in the emergency room, things had gotten far more serious.
    “Your wife is approaching clinical shock,” a nurse said. Jai was so scared. I saw that on her face. How was I? Also scared, but I was trying to remain calm so I could assess the situation.
    I looked around me. It was 9 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. Surely, any doctor or nurse on the hospital’s seniority list had gotten off for the night. I had to assume this was the B team. Would they be up to the job of saving my child and my wife?
    It did not take long, however, for these doctors and nurses to impress me. If they were the B team, they were awfully good. They took over with a wonderful mix of hurry and calm. They didn’t seem panicked. They carried themselves like they knew how to efficiently do what had to be done, moment by moment. And they said all the right things.
    As Jai was being rushed into surgery for an emergency C-section, she said to the doctor, “This is bad, isn’t it?”
    I admired the doctor’s response. It was the perfect answer for our times: “If we were really in a panic, we wouldn’t have had you sign all the insurance forms, would we?” she said to Jai. “We wouldn’t have taken the time.” The doctor had a point. I wondered how often she used her “hospital paperwork” riff to ease patients’ anxieties.
    Whatever the case, her words helped. And then the anesthesiologist took me aside.
    “Look, you’re going to have a job tonight,” he said, “and you’re the only person who can do it. Your wife is halfway to clinical shock. If she goes into shock, we can treat her. But it won’t be easy for us. So you have to help her remain calm. We want you to keep her with us.”
    So often, everyone pretends that husbands have an actual role when babies are born. “Breathe, honey. Good. Keep breathing. Good.” My dad always found that coaching culture amusing, since he was out having cheeseburgers when his first child was born. But now I was being given a real job. The anesthesiologist was straightforward, but I sensed the intensity of his request. “I don’t know what you should say to her or how you should say it,” he told me. “I’ll trust you to figure that out. Just keep her off the ledge when she gets scared.”
    They began the C-section and I held Jai’s hand as tightly as I could. I was able to see what was going on and she couldn’t. I decided I would calmly tell her everything that was happening. I’d give her the truth.
    Her lips were blue. She was shaking. I was rubbing her head, then holding her hand with both of mine, trying to describe the surgery in a way that was direct yet reassuring. For her part, Jai tried desperately to remain with us, to stay calm and conscious.
    “I see a baby,” I said. “There’s a baby coming.”
    Through tears, she couldn’t ask the hardest question. But I had the answer. “He’s moving.”
    And then the baby, our first child, Dylan, let out a wail like you’ve never heard before. Just bloody murder. The nurses smiled. “That’s great,” someone said. The preemies who come out limp often have the most trouble. But the ones who come out all pissed off and full of noise, they’re the fighters. They’re the ones who thrive.
    Dylan weighed two pounds,