Baby Gets a New Heart, but Mom Needs One Too

Ten-month-old Madalyn Baynes is recuperating from a heart transplant, but the health crises in the Baynes household are not over yet.

The Simi Valley infant’s mother remains on a waiting list for a donor heart of her own.

That mother and daughter both needed new hearts at the same time is rare enough, said doctors at UCLA Medical Center, but that Madalyn got the heart condition from her mother in utero is rarer still.

“It’s an unusual combination to have both a mother and child suffering from cardiomyopathy, or heart failure, to the point of considering heart transplantation,” said Dr. Mark Plunkett, director of the pediatric heart transplantation program at UCLA, who conducted Madalyn’s surgery. “That’s an extremely unusual situation.”

Although Andrea Baynes did not know she was carrying a rare virus while she was pregnant, doctors believe it traveled through the placenta to her baby, eventually causing both of them to suffer viral cardiomyopathy.

Through medication and a defibrillator implanted in her chest, Andrea, 30, has been able to function at near-normal levels, although she tires easily and cannot work. Madalyn appeared fine until she was 6 months old, when she developed similar symptoms, but went undiagnosed. Her condition deteriorated rapidly before her July 5 transplant at UCLA Medical Center, her parents and doctors said.

“She developed symptoms of pneumonia and she couldn’t breathe,” said Madalyn’s father, Ken Baynes, 38. “The virus had gotten into the muscle of the heart. She was having a harder and harder time.”

Madalyn’s weight wasn’t increasing at a normal rate, rising only 5 pounds since her birth at 8 pounds. Infants her age normally weigh 24 pounds.

She was admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit at UCLA on April 23. It was at that time doctors realized that Madalyn also had cardiomyopathy.

Because Madalyn could not breathe on her own, she was put on a ventilator. There were a couple of times, Andrea said, when she thought her daughter was going to die.

All that changed July 4 when Andrea and Ken received a phone call informing them that a heart had been found. They were told only that the donor was a 2-year-old Seattle girl.

“Clinically, she’s recovered,” Plunkett said. “She should be able to lead a happy and healthy life and grow normally. She’s doing really well.”

Madalyn has grown stronger each day, her parents said, weighing in this week at 15 pounds. Color is back in her now chunky cheeks and she gently reaches out to touch her mother’s finger when Andrea draws near.

Madalyn returned home Friday to a giant “Welcome Back” poster. Madalyn’s 8-year-old brother, Brandon, and the family’s Labrador, Chance, were on hand to greet her. Madalyn turns 1 year old on Aug. 22.

Because Andrea, a licensed vocational nurse, cannot work, Ken, a CAT scan technician has had to juggle several jobs to make ends meet.

To help out, family friend John Hoffart, a Simi Valley police officer, and local restaurant owner Bob Gomez will hold a fund-raiser for the Baynes family Monday and Tuesday at Senor Gomez Courtyard, 2916 Cochran St., in Simi Valley.

Andrea and Ken know their baby girl with the strawberry-blond hair and hazel eyes is out of the woods yet. At home, she will be connected to an IV, receive physical therapy and ingest a host of medicines.

Andrea will have to wait two to three years for a donor heart. She is lower on the priority list than patients who are hospitalized, said Caron Burch, a pediatric heart transplant coordinator at UCLA.