A mom has sparked a debate after she was photographed on a Disney ride breastfeeding her baby.
Meredith Barnyak, a mom-of-two from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania took a trip to Orlando, Florida with her two children, Graham, 3, and Poppy, 1, to show them everything the magical land has to offer.
However, while she was on a ride, she realized her baby was getting a little restless and kept grabbing her shirt clearly in the mood to be fed. Of course, she wasn't going to deny her child food, so she carefully pulled up her top and started breastfeeding her baby.
Little did she know, a camera - with a bright flash - was going to go off and capture the intimate moment.
"As soon as I saw the flash, I was like, 'Oh no, I think all these people have a picture of [me] breastfeeding my baby on this ride," Barnyak told Today during an interview.
"She would pull my shirt and I thought, 'Ok, it's dark out. We're all humans. We're all honestly going to enjoy the ride a lot better and you'll be happier being fed."
"I am a pretty big proponent of any way you can feed your baby you should be able to do it — in any place," she added, stating that she only fed Poppy on the slower-moving rides.
After the photo of Barnyak made the rounds between members of her family, her cousin Jo Goddard, who runs a woman's lifestyle site named Cup of Jo, asked if she could post the photo on her company's Instagram.
Goddard captioned the post: "My cousin @meredithbarnyak being an absolute MOM on this Disney ride," alongside multiple heart and trophy emojis.
"I thought it was a great picture and our family was laughing about it. And so I was more than happy for Joanna to post it," the mom-of-two told the outlet, stating that she hadn't worried about any sort of backlash at all.
Have a look at the picture below:However, in the comments section, haters started piling up with many slamming the Disney-fan as a "bad mom."
"Sorry @cupofjo — big fan of you but this is stupid, dangerous and irresponsible. @disney allowed this?" wrote one user while another added: "Lifetime Orlando resident and year after year people get hurt or killed on theme park rides — usually for being dumb. I have no words."
A third added: "There’s a definite time and place for everything. This was definitely not the place! Poor baby! Poor stomach!"
Others also claimed that Barnyak was doing this for "attention."
"...She clearly did this for the sole purpose of attention," this user commented. "These rides are less than a minute. No way was her baby all of a sudden starving after 30 seconds. All the jostling on those rides...
"This is not the safest way to get attention. Parents should really put their babies first instead of attention on social media," they also added.
After seeing all the backlash, Barnyak told Today that she was taken aback by it all.
"I guess if you look at this picture, it might look like it's an intense ride. But it's a boat ride," she said. "There's no seatbelt. It's a very nice relaxing ride except that there is a drop that you don't see coming because it's dark. And that's [when] that photo was taken."
"If anything, I felt like it was actually more secure because she was in one place versus me having to juggle her moving around," she addded. "I wouldn't have breastfed my child if it was a roller coaster."
What do you think of the move?