The plot thickens ...

Today we visited with Dr. Lundt (the cardiologist). After two weeks of constantly feeding Claira formula fortified breast milk, she lost weight! She grew 2.5 inches and lost 3.5 ounces! Dr. Lundt does not think that her weight is heart related for this reason ... usually when a baby is in severe heart failure it will cause her to sweat profusely and breathe heavily when she's trying to eat. Therefore causing her not to eat well. In Claira's case she's eating well, but just not enough and she simply doesn't seem very interested in it. She watched her eat today to confirm. Claira's heart failure is currently being maintained with the medication. If the heart failure were causing this she would have to do surgery immediately by clamping the heart as a temporary fix only to have to do surgery to fix the holes when she got bigger. She says this is beyond her expertise.
Tomorrow we go to see a new pediatrician, Dr. Hughes, who will hopefully order tests to find out why she's losing weight. We've officially hit "failure to thrive" which is something I've been dreading. It could be reflux, it could be that she's not metabolizing her food, it could be something much more serious.
Dr. Lundt says she is very concerned about the size of Claira's holes in her heart and that they would never close on their own. She simply cannot think about surgery until she gets bigger and we resolve the weight issues.