Rebecca Dunbar, mother who breastfed son on Santa's lap, faces backlash after posting photo on Facebook

The picture had begun as a joke after her son needed to be fed while in the queue, but she wanted to make public breastfeeding more acceptable

File photo (Rex Features)

A woman has received a huge negative backlash after posting a picture of herself breastfeeding her son whilst sitting on Santa’s lap on the internet.

Rebecca Dunbar, 40, had the picture taken spontaneously for fun, but wanted to post it on the internet in order to make it more acceptable to breastfeed in public, Global News reported.

The Ontario mother of three, who was taking her one-year-old twins to see Santa, said that about 75 per cent of the feedback she’s seen has been negative, where many comments called her “trashy”.

The photo shows the mother happily looking down at her son while he breastfeeds with Santa pointing next to them, with a caption that reads: “All I want for Christmas is a happy healthy baby.”

Ms Dunbar told Global News: “We were just in line and my little guy, who has the patience of nothing, decided he was hungry in about two seconds.

“He would have just screamed the entire time so I started nursing him. And we were next in line.”

Then she came up with the idea of taking the photo whilst breastfeeding, and asked the photographer if he would be comfortable taking the shot.

When they asked Santa, he said no one had asked that question in 40 years, “but why not”.

But not everyone agreed. Jeanie tweeted that just becasue you can breastfeed somewhere, doesn't mean that you should.

Ms Dunbar says she resents the fact that women can be made to feel ashamed for doing something that is supposed to promote the health of their children.

Some social media users did think it was acceptbale, however. Nathalie Medeiros commented that having to breastfeed in public toilets is not good enough for mothers and their babies.

“I think breastfeeding should be made more acceptable in all ways,” she told Global News.

Ms Dunbar said the shot was less revealing than pictures of “scantily clad” women, and wishes breastfeeding in public was not so frowned upon.

“I just want it to be so normal that it doesn’t even need a discussion.

“It’s quite disappointing that people are so negative about it when it’s not meant to be that way,” she told Huffington Post.

But the mother’s friends had been much more positive about the picture, which she says she would take again and again.

She will however, have to modify her Facebook settings to deal with the negative comments.