Warren Gatland opened up about the death of his daughter in an incredibly honest interview on Off The Ball.

His daughter, named Shauna, was born with spina bifida, which causes incomplete development of the spinal cord in the womb. The exact cause of the condition is unknown.

The former Wales coach explained that he and his wife had believed their child was healthy up until the day she was born.

"I spoke to the professor and said on a scale of 1 to 10 how bad is she? And she said she was a 9."

Warren Gatland discussed the tragic death of his daughter Shauna at just four months old.

Full interview here: https://t.co/6A4ptv4hYP pic.twitter.com/UR5XU1ebFf

— Off The Ball (@offtheball) November 13, 2019

“Shauna was born in 1992 when I was playing for Galwegians. We didn’t know [there was anything wrong]. My wife had taken folic acid. She’d looked after herself and had scans and nothing had shown up.

“She was born in Galway hospital. Obviously the nurses had seen she was born with spina bifida.

“You imagine the size of the baby and the size of the lesion on her back was about the size of your fist. Which on a baby is pretty significant.

“There were tears in the eyes and I hadn’t seen obviously what had happened. Obviously then the surgeons come in and the professors and stuff. Yeah, it was tough,” Gatland said.

'It's a horrendous decision'

The seriousness of the condition meant that the Gatlands were left with two choices - get extensive medical treatment for their daughter for her entire life or let nature take its course and give Shauna a brief but peaceful life at home with her family.

“It’s a horrendous decision. The thing is it wasn’t so much that. At any stage, given the size of the lesion, if she had any infection it probably would have gone straight to her brain and had an impact.

“Then the things the doctor was saying were, ‘She’s going to be incontinent. She’s never going to walk. She could have brain damage. As it is she’s going to have to go through operation after operation after operation.’ Look, it was tough.

“Then even saying things like if by some miracle she happened to get to become a teenager - then what happens?

“Quality of life and then going through puberty and those sort of things. So it was the toughest thing that we had to do in terms of making a decision.

“We spoke to the professor and said, ‘On a scale of one to 10, how bad is she?’ He said she’s a nine. So it doesn’t get much worse than that probably from that point of view.

“Having spoken to him he said, ‘Look, sometimes the best decision is to let nature take its course and see what happens.’

“It was tough but we had four months of what you would call normality as a baby until she slowly deteriorated,” Gatland explained.

While it was an incredibly tough time for Gatland and his wife the ordeal did bring them together as a couple.

“Sometimes with couples it goes two ways. Either they actually part, in terms of they’re not able to handle the pressure or it brings them closer together.

“I think for us it brought us closer together,” Gatland commented.

To find out more about spina bifida visit https://www.sbhi.ie/ (Spina Bifida Hydrocephalus Ireland) where you can donate to help people living with the condition in Ireland.