Matt and Maddy McCommell were already parents to daughter Edie when they fell pregnant with their second child in 2021.

Maddy's pregnancy had been uneventful, until she began experiencing "stabbing stomach pains" just two weeks before her due date.

"We went into our local hospital," Matt, 37, tells 9honey.

"They monitored her and then it was decided we were going to induction."

Maddy is a midwife, and neither of them were overly concerned about the outcome at this point, until Maddy suffered a cord prolapse, a medical emergency when the umbilical cord comes out before the baby, potentially depriving them of oxygen.

"So we were off to the [operating] theatre. It took about 40 minutes from the cord prolapse to our daughter being born, and that whole time she was deprived of oxygen."

Their daughter, Wren, was resuscitated and placed on intubation and on a ventilator. Maddy was still under general anaesthetic, and unaware of what had taken place.

"I saw her maybe 45 minutes to an hour after she was born," Matt said.

"That whole time [I was waiting] I didn't know if she was alive or had died during birth. I was just waiting in the corridor for news."

When he saw Wren at approximately 3am, he thought things were fine.

"Being oblivious, I thought, 'Oh well, she's alive now, she'll be okay.'"

Wren was transferred to the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne when she was just six hours old.

'Being oblivious, I thought, 'Oh well, she's alive now, she'll be okay.'

After three days, an MRI confirmed the worst. Wren had suffered irreversible brain damage during birth and would not survive.

"I was still very shocked. They sat us down and they didn't have to say anything," Matt recalled.

"We knew straight away. They said the brain damage was catastrophic and there was nothing we could do to change it."

They had to act quickly. There were things they wanted to do before they inevitably lost her.

They wanted their parents to meet Wren, and they wanted Edie to met her sister.

The moment Edie and Wren met was "just this ray of sunshine in the darkness".

Edie was two at the time, "so she didn't see that her sister was going to die, she just saw her sister and was just shouting her love".

"Being oblivious, I thought, 'Oh well, she's alive now, she'll be okay.'"

"And as soon as our parents came into the room, it was just beautiful," he added.

"Edie just brightened up the whole room, which was really special for us all. It was a really dark moment, a scary moment for us all. We were all smiling."

They decided to paint Wren's nails bright pink, and painted theirs the same colour.

"I still have pink nails to this day."

They decided to paint Wren's nails bright pink, and painted theirs the same colour.

They also had to plan Wren's funeral.

"I remember that afternoon when we found out she was going to die, we were making arrangements for her death, which is really hard to do," he said.

"You've got a baby girl who's five days old and you're calling a funeral home to organise a pick-up because we knew that she was going to pass away."

Matt and Maddy were told they could decide when life support was removed, and they chose Sunday, which would give them time to hold a naming ceremony and have precious photos taken by HeartFelt.

"They're a charity that specialise in taking pictures of babies and infants and children when parents are faced with losing them or if they are stillborn," he explained.

"They give a memory of photographs to families all free of charge."

The photoshoot was booked in for Sunday, but by Saturday evening, they could tell it was time.

"She was just on a mobile ventilator, and when we got to the room that night, we decided that she did look tired," he said.

Wren had suffered irreversible brain damage during birth and would not survive.

"We did some plaster casts to the feet and the hands and we took a little hair and we re-cleaned our nails and fast forward to 7.30pm, we had chested skin-to-skin [contact] on the bed, we removed the ventilation and we were lucky that she managed to breathe on her own for about 40 minutes which was long enough."

HeartFelt had managed to send a photographer early and just in time to capture the last 10 minutes of Wren's life, and 10 minutes after she'd passed away.

"So we've got all these incredible photos of her now all around the house that night as just this beautiful reminder of how beautiful our daughter is," he said.

"We are very lucky because when she passed away we were in Melbourne, we were three-and-a-half hours from home. So we put her in a car in a car and drove home back to our town in Warrnambool and that's where the funeral director picked her up."

Wren was laid to rest four days later.

Matt, Maddy and their children Edie and Noah visiting Wren.

"We just had a little outside funeral for family at a nearby cemetery which overlooks the ocean. It's a really beautiful little spot."

A close friend took photos on the day, which included Edie "dancing at the funeral".

"When you're two-and-a-half years old, you don't entirely comprehend what's just happened."

Matt will never forget the feeling of carrying Wren's tiny little coffin. What followed was the most difficult time of their lives.

"The depth of the grief in the early days is just unbelievable and that continues on," Matt said.

"It's hard to describe sometimes because now it's been three years and I think I'm in quite a good place now.

'The depth of the grief in the early days is just unbelievable and that continues on.'

"Back then, you're literally just taking it hour by hour, just trying to survive.

"You're so lost and confused and angry, you've got all the emotions and you're just longing to hold your daughter who you've lost.

"You do learn to live with it, you haven't got another choice. But that doesn't make it any easier."

Edie is now five and Matt and Maddy have since welcomed their son Noah who is two.

They still consider themselves a family of five.

"It still doesn't seem real. She dies every day. There's a point in the day when you wake up in the morning and you think, 'Oh s--t, that actually happened.' And that's kind of something that you just learn to live with.

"On the outside you look normal and happy and most of the time you are."

They still consider themselves a family of five.

"For me, not being able to fix anything, I felt hopeless. It took a long time through professional counselling to come to the realisation there wasn't anything I could fix.

Matt is sharing his story in support of Red Nose Day (August 28th). He is encouraging Australians to head to rednoseday.org.au and buy an iconic 'red nose' or donate to help raise $1 million dollars to support bereaved families.

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