Ethan’s Story

childTo bring awareness to the genetic condition called MCADD, we, Becky and Trevor Wyne, would like to tell the story of our precious son Ethan. Ethan James Wyne was born on September 8th, 2013. Tragically, Ethan passed away on September 12, 2013 and 8 hours later was diagnosed with Medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase (MCAD) deficiency.

Ethan was a healthy baby boy throughout the entire pregnancy. At delivery by all observable factors, Ethan appeared to be 100% healthy and did not exhibit any alarming symptoms at the time. He was born weighing 8lbs 9oz and 21.75 inches long; a big healthy baby boy. Ethan was discharged from the hospital September 10, 2013 and continued to do well; seemingly happy and content, crying very little and sleeping soundly for long periods of time. For any parent, he was a dream baby to have!

Half way through the day on September 11th, 2013 we noticed he had begun to struggle with feeding; only taking in food for no longer than 5-10 minutes at a time. We were informed by a health care professional that if he was urinating and having regular bowel movements that Ethan was getting enough to eat. As the day went on, Ethan appeared to be very tired and still seemed to struggle with feeding, however, sleep is normal for a newborn and he was still urinating and having regular bowel movements.

Again, nothing overly alarming but as the day went on we began to feel concern. At midnight, we woke Ethan up for his feeding and again we struggled to get him to eat. We attempted to bottle feed him with pumped breast milk but still no success. We had decided that we would prepare a formula bottle but before we could get the formula bottle made, Ethan had passed out. Not knowing what was going on, we called 911 and my husband did CPR on Ethan until the ambulance got to our home. When Ethan got to the hospital the Doctors and Nurses had no idea what was happening with Ethan. Within 20 minutes of arriving at the hospital Ethan had passed away.

As mentioned, 8 hours later he was diagnosed with MCAD deficiency, a rare life threatening genetic disorder we had never heard of nor knew we were carriers of. The reason we have created this organization is to save babies like our son, Ethan. We would give anything to have him back and would never want anyone to go through what Ethan and our family have endured. We love Ethan more than anything in the world and creating and running this organization is our silver lining. This is Ethan`s legacy!