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Since both ended up dead anyway, the feeding of Baby B had no effect on that baby, did it?

The effect on Baby B was that, even though he died as all living things die, he did not die hungry or without knowing the comfort of being fed by his mother. It is a world of difference to that infant.

You are trying to prove very dissimilar things by analogy. Analogies are never true. Only up to a certain point can they be similar.

Orthodoxy does not think of salvation as a mere off and on switch...

If salvation means heaven and anything else means hell (or Limbo) then we have two alternatives that are pretty starkly absolute in their consequence. So 'saved' is pretty much an off and on switch. There is no such thing as "a little bit saved". God's grace and salvation are either all-sufficient to enter God's eternal presence in heaven or it is not. The thief upon the cross was not "a little bit saved". He was saved at once and for eternity by the promise and command of Jesus as He became fully Christ The Redeemer. And that same salvation is available to us by the repeated promises of scripture, written as plainly as they can be expressed.

What grace and benefit does the baptized infant receive that the unbaptized infant doesn't, in the Orthodox Church? I really don't pretend to be able to define it. But that the infant who is baptized receives something real, something good, and something that benefits them -- of that I have no doubt.

Well if you're going to concede this, then I don't quite know what to say. This is actually more irritating than a ten-thousand word Jesuitical response would be.

I'm trying to feel like I won something but I'm not convincing myself. ;)

Have a lovely evening. I am not, BTW, trying to herd you Orthodox or Catholics into a Baptist church. If you ever want to come, you'd be welcome. But I believe in letting God lead His own where He wills and at His own pace. As Spurgeon suggested, we Baptists can worry about converting all those other churches after we finish preaching the gospel to all nations and all non-Christians. A practical man, Spurgeon.

"There is no such thing as "a little bit saved"."

Orthodox approaches to the spiritual life revolve around the idea of theosis. There is really no English equivalent for this word. "Divinization" and "deification" are very poor translations, since they imply that we think we are becoming God.

"Sanctification" and "becoming Christ-like" really don't capture it, either, since these are ways of Protestant speaking that apply to someone who is "saved" and now is living out the implications of that. These terms to not capture the very direct participation in the life of God that we believe is possible to begin right here on earth. It is not imitation -- it is participation.

Sometimes we say that we are "being saved", in an ongoing sense, but even that doesn't really capture it, since it implies (especially when combined with the standard and honest answer of "I don't know" that any Orthodox Christian gives to the question of "are you saved?") -- a mental and emotional state of uncertainty, doubt, and fear that are just not a part of the Orthodox spiritual life. Our lives are filled with comfort, love, hope, and the knowledge of God's mercy -- as long as we actively receive it.

My analogy wasn't a great one, and you are right that analogies always break down.

The point that I was trying to make was that we want to join ourselves to Christ. We want to participate in the life of Christ. We want (in the terminology of St. Gregory Palamas) to participate in the divine energies and begin the path to theosis. We want our children to participate in the life of Christ and to be joined to the Body of Christ.

We don't baptize our children out of fear that they will go to hell or limbo (which we Orthodox don't believe in anyway) if they aren't baptized. We baptize our children for the same reason that we keep them warm, feed them, hold them, and comfort them when they cry. We baptize them because we love them -- and what more loving thing can a parent do for their baby than to join him to Christ?