Mother’s Milk is Best
Mother’s milk is best for baby. Period. Full Stop. Well, that deserves some elaboration.
Mother’s milk contains antibodies which help to protect baby in his most fragile stage of life. He is coming out of a water-cushioned, double-buffered, triple-covered, perpetually warm place into the realm of germs and viruses.
More importantly, mother’s milk is tuned to baby’s needs. What do I mean by that? Well, at birth, did you know that their stomach is just the size of a small marble? We learned that in Lamaze class, but then in the excitement and exhaustion after his birth, we sort of forgot… that first night after his birth, we kept him in the post-natal room with us, but exhaustion took over (try panicking over baby poop with a few hours of exhausted slumber) and we asked the nurses to take him to the nursery the second night. We also told them that my wife’s milk didn’t seem to be flowing yet and we were worried he would be hungry… error, error, error… why? Read on…
The morning of the 3rd day, they brought baby back, and cheerfully informed us that he took two ounces of formula early that morning… 10 minutes later, he threw up for the first time, and that’s when I remembered the size of the stomach for newborns… two sips would fill his stomach, two ounces would fill him up to his ears…
For those of us worried that “baby is not eating” that first couple of days (you have to make sure he nurses, as the “pre-flow” milk is most beneficial to baby), don’t worry because the doctor later pointed out to me that the baby’s whole body is full of Amniotic Fluid (that’s the liquid he was swimming in for 9 months), which is very nutritious. For those interested, that is also why newborns have SOO MUCH poop… the digested Amoniotic Fluid is coming through… all 9 months (? or however many months he has been swallowing that stuff)… 
So to recap: milk flow will be slow at the start, and keep pace with baby’s needs. The more he suckles, the more milk will be produced. Take the effort to attend a breastfeeding class before leaving the hospital as both mother and child will benefit greatly from instruction. You may eventually find the right procedure (I would imagine that as mammals, it comes naturally), or even stumble across kind folk who know the cure for chapped nipples, etc, but why suffer when there are simple, concise instructions you can use immediately?
