Mums have rallied around a birth photographer whose Instagram account was shut down after she shared breastfeeding photos ... during World Breastfeeding Week.
Melissa Jean Wilbraham, from Queensland, Australia, shares her photos of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding on her MelissaJeanBabies Instagram page, which has more than 24,000 followers.
Upon discovering her account had been banned the 33-year-old told Daily Mail Australia: "It was like being punished for celebrating the miracle of life."
When Wilbraham tried to log in to her Instagram account, a message appeared which read: "Your account has been deleted for not following our terms. We’re unable to resore accounts that are deleted for these types of violations".
Instagram's basic terms state users must not post "violent, nude, partially nude, discriminatory, unlawful, infringing, hateful, pornographic or sexually suggestive photos or other content".
Wilbraham decided to share her shock with her friends and former clients via her Facebook page.
"How ironic that the very day 'World Breastfeeding Week' began, my business was removed from Instagram," she wrote.
"There will always be sad humans who report my images but I will NEVER let this stop me celebrating and normalising the miracle of life [heart emoticon] #bringbackmelissajeanbabies #bringbackmelissajean."
She also created a new Instagram page, which quickly gained 5,000 followers, all of whom were rallying to #bringbackmelissajean.
When Instagram looked into Wilbraham's case they reinstated her page and issued an apology.
"We allow photos of breastfeeding on Instagram," they clarified in a statement.
"We looked into what happened here, and this was a pure mistake that we’ve now rectified.
"For context, our teams review content when it’s reported to us for violating our Community Guidelines.
"They review millions of pieces of content daily – and as much as we’d like to be free of mistakes, we do make them. We are sorry that this happened, but we use cases like this to learn and improve.
"We have reached out to @melissajeanbabies and apologised for our mistake."
Wilbraham says she holds no grudge against the people who reported her pictures, in fact she can now view the events of the past week in a positive light.
"I’m actually grateful for the haters because without them none of this would have happened," Wilbraham said.
"Having people oppose my work has attracted so much attention.
"Going forward I’m more passionate about it than ever, I’m definitely not going to allow the negatively to make me conform to what they want."
