feeding a baby

Tonight she ate egg yolk!

And I've introduced a third meal. Now she nurses first thing in the morning, then she has fruit mid-morning, then a vegetable for lunch, then she nurses mid-afternoon, then she has cereal with a couple spoons-ful of veggies in it for supper (except tonight she had egg yolk hard-cooked then pureed with my expressed milk), then she nurses again before bed.

Written down like that, it sounds like she spends her whole day eating!

She doesn't *have* to nurse so often. If we're out somewhere, often she'll be distracted enough not to. But since she's my vegetarian baby, until I've introduced enough protein-rich foods (legumes, nuts, certain vegetables, whole-milk yogurt; and once she's a year old she can have whole milk), we're nursing as often as she needs to.

Soy is also a good protein source, but there's been enough uncertainty about soy's effect on children that I'm not planning for it to be a major part of her diet.