Hi,

Just wanted to drop a line to some of you who may not have heard as yet.

This morning Tania had to go in for an emergency ceaser, and we have unfortunately lost our baby.

Tania is physically fine (thank God), and will be in hospital for about a week.

We had a baby girl, we have named Montana Sky. She died due to either a blood vessel rupturing in her Uterus or the Placenta pulling away from the Uterus wall. This cut off her oxygen and blood and she would have died in a matter of minutes of the rupture happening. There was nothing that anyone could have done.

Tania had been fine and feeling really well. She had been on the computer and the baby had been active and kicking all morning. She was having a shower after finishing on the computer, and began to feel faint. she sat down for a moment, and realised it wasn't going away so she came out of the shower and made it into our bedroom. She called Maddison for help, and managed to get into the hall upstairs and collapsed...but didn't lose consciousness (miracle 1). Maddison was not at school today (miracle 2 She goes to school Tues-Thur) so Tania was able to talk Maddison through making a telephone call to me.

I was at Electrolux early this morning and I was on another call when I got the call from home on my mobile. I sent it to voice mail and then checked my voice mail immediately on hanging up the first call (miracle 3 as I often wait till I have a moment to check my messages which can be hours). It was Maddie who had left me a message, but she had started talking too early and all I got was "...and that is all I have to say, I love you daddy, bye" Thinking she had just rung to say "Hi" I often again don't ring back till I have time, but this time I rang back straight away to say "Hi" back (miracle 4).

I had a conversation with Tania via Maddison, Tania couldn't get up and was feeling faint, but thought she would be OK. She didn't want an ambulance. What she didn't know was that she was haemorrhaging badly, cutting blood supply to little Montana, and Tania ended up losing over 2 liters of blood (apparently you only have about 4.5 litres of blood in your whole system). I decided I was calling an ambulance anyway, and I would come straight home (miracle 5...I don't often go against my wife's wishes!)

By the time I had gathered my stuff and ran to the car (approx 100mtrs away) jumped in and got going on the road and called Maddison back, the Ambulance was already there (Miracle 6 Tania had lost so much blood, by the time the Ambo's had arrived her blood pressure had dropped so low that they couldn't even find her pulse let alone get any blood out for a test.) They were able to get some saline drips into her and stabilise her blood pressure, before taking her to Hills Private Hospital. While this was happening I was driving like a hairy goat for home and I had Maddison on the phone relaying information to me as I was driving, and she was able to tell me which hospital I needed to go to etc.

We are really blessed to live in a great street with fantastic neighbours. When our neighbours saw the ambulance they came running and took charge of the girls. The girls spent the day with Tracey, and another one of our neighbours, Claire was able to relay info to me as I didn't have Tracey's number initially.

I met Tania at the hospital. The emergency staff was really kind and calming. It was about now that we realised that something was really really wrong. The foetal heart beat thingy wasn't able to locate a heart beat. They took Tania up for a ceaser, and unfortunately our precious baby Montana had died. She was 36 weeks pregnant and was due to be born on Oct 1 or Oct 8.

The staff here have been wonderful. They have been really sensitive and caring, and we are doing OK under the circumstances. Tania's family and three pastors have spent the day with us, and several friends have popped round already. Tania has not yet been up to visitors, but we are really comforted to know that so many people are hurting with us, and praying for us, and just wanted to be close to us, even though they couldn't be right with us today.

The really scary thing for me today, has been that if any one of those 6 miracles had not have happened, this email would also be telling you that my beautiful wife had died from blood loss along with my new daughter Montana. The pain that we are going through right now is not real nice I have to say, but it could have been SOOO much worse. I still have my wife, and my two beautiful girls still have their mum. Praise God!

We don't know why this has happened, and we are hurting pretty badly right now. The really comforting thing to us today has been that we know all of our family, friends, colleagues, work friends, neighbours, and church family are all crying with us, and praying for us. It feels like a soft bouncy safety net has caught us, and every one of you is part of that net. Thank you so much.

We have survived today! We still have tomorrow to face, and we will face that in the morning. It is nice at a time like this to have a faith in God. I know with certainty that one day Montana is going to get to play with her big sisters, and that we WILL be together again one day. I can't wait already!

Thanks again for your friendship and your concern for us all.

Love from the Chan Clan