A COUPLE have spoken about the heartbreaking decision to take their 11-month-old daughter off a ventilator so they could hold her in their arms as she died.

Robert and Charlotte Smallwood, of Ailsa Road, Shadsworth, Blackburn, had hoped to give Kathryn Michelle an extra special first birthday party on January 26 after spending Christmas in the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, Pendlebury.

But she developed chronic lung disease in the form of acute pneumonitis and spent 13 days on a ventilator until doctors told the couple on January 2 that she had hours to live.

Kathryn died in Charlotte's arms later that day, as Robert, 51, helped care for the child.

It was a double heartbreak for Robert, who has four children from a previous relationship and whose daughter Gillian would have now been 21 had she not died in the dentist's chair when she was five.

"I never thought I would go through it again but at least this time I got to say my goodbyes," said Robert who has been on long term sick from work for four years. Kathryn was a little angel. She would sleep all the way through and we would have to wake her up for her night time feed. We were hoping we would be bringing her back home for her birthday, and make up for missing Christmas.

"When we knew she was going to die we took her off the machine so we could cuddle her and let her die in our arms."

Kathryn was born three months premature. Her lungs were undeveloped at birth and she battled for life in Queen's Park Hospital's neo-natal unit in Blackburn until March 2001. The family then had her at home for five months until she had to have an operation for hydrochephalus, an accumulation of fluid in the brain. Then doctors found two holes in her heart and discovered her lungs were still struggling badly.

The couple thought Kathryn would survive her problems, even when a nurse advised she be admitted to hospital in December.

Charlotte, 19, said: "Another baby could never replace our Kathryn. I can't see myself having another for a while, it would be too upsetting. The doctors and nurses did as much as they could for her, but they were fighting a losing battle."

The couple want to thank all the nurses and consultant Carl Rakshi who treated Kathryn at Queen's Park, as well as those at Pendlebury.

The funeral is on Monday at the Chapel of Rest, Mincing Lane, Blackburn, at 2.45pm. Kathryn will be buried in the children's graveyard at Pleasington Cemetery.