There is a TV advert which, for a good year of my life, made me want to hurl the nearest object at the screen.

It showed a beautiful woman seated in a pristine room. She wore a luxurious cashmere top which had gently slipped from her shoulder to allow her to hold a nuzzling infant to her breast. Her face was a portrait of serenity and the whole image oozed contentment. Bizarrely, it was an ad for formula milk.

At the time I was breast-feeding and the chasm between that depiction and my own, more fraught, experience was laughable.

I was reminded of how that ad used to make me feel recently when reading about the rise of the "Brelfie", aka breast-feeding selfie.

The craze is apparently one of the parenting trends of 2015, acccording to netmums. Like all social media trends, celebrities (backed up by a crack team of make-up artists) were early adopters. Now, a backlash has been reported as mothers who bottle-feed say the images make them feel persecuted.

Breast-feeding can be a hard gig. Having been caught a little on the hop by the birth of my son - he arrived before the breast-feeding workshop - I gaily forged on regardless, with the attitude: "Of course I'll breast feed. You just plonk them on and get on with it, don't you?"

In my ignorance, I had assumed that for those who didn't do it, it was simply a matter of convenience. For some it is easy, but for me it took ten long, at times torturous, weeks before I was able to fully feed without formula back-up, industrial strength creams and a host of other gadgets (who knew nipple shields were an actual thing?) The pressure I put myself under to achieve so-called "exclusive breast-feeding" was immense.

I would never want to put anyone off breast-feeding, but when it's not happening, surely there must come a point when the intense stress involved outweighs the benefits. I have friends who reached that point and yet, years later, are still guilt-ridden by their decision to stop.

However, being a Women's Issue, there is no such thing as a sensible dialogue in the public domain. It is the law that any dilemma must be depicted as having two diametrically opposed sides (nothing like a bit of divide and rule to keep 'em in their place).

So, in accordance with that law, the response to Brelfies has been typically, and artificially, polarised. Commentary on the issue makes out that there are two distinct camps at war; the so-called "Breastapo" earth mothers versus callous bottle-feeders.

While everyone knows someone who embodies an extreme, most people, in my experience, fall somewhere in the middle and are muddling along as best they can.

I'm sure the Brelfie craze probably started with the best of intentions - to encourage more women to breast-feed in a climate when it can still feel like a public decency issue- but who are these images really for?

If you are already breast-feeding, then, hoorah, you've cracked it on your own. Well done.

No. Most affected will be those who would dearly love to breast-feed but, for whatever reason, are struggling or are bottle-feeding and not necessarily feeling like it was an empowered decision.

No-one is disputing the benefit of breast-feeding, there is new data every week which confirms it, but giving your child formula milk is hardly on a par with cherry cola.

If you are trying, and floundering, then what you need is consistent, non-judgemental support and practical advice, not the feeling that everyone else is a success and you are a failure.

What women in the throes of a negative experience need to encourage them is absolutely not a daily deluge of photographs of "those who can" on social media. That is just getting a kicking when you are down.