The photo of a young mum that's challenging the way we think about breastfeeding.

A young mum is being praised for sharing an unconventional image of feeding her newborn baby.

Rebecca McKeever from New York told the Huffington Post the photo was taken only 17 hours after her daughter was born. She said she resorted to using a syringe after daughter Andromeda refused to latch.

“A lactation consultant came to our hospital room to ask if we needed help,” she said.

“She saw that I was expressing colostrum but that Andromeda wasn’t latching, so she brought in little cups and syringes so we could get some food in her.”

“I expressed some colostrum into a cup, then put it into the syringe and fed her little drops at a time.”

A photo posted by ???? Rebecca A. McKeever ???? (@wisdombird) on Aug 28, 2016 at 12:07pm PDT

Colostrum is a type of breast milk produced in the early stages of breastfeeding that is especially thick and yellow in colour.

The New York resident said her fickle feeder even began to latch after she was fed using the syringe.

“A few minutes after getting that nourishment, she woke up a bit more and actually tried the breast,” she said.

“We had to do a mix of syringe feeding and breastfeeding for the first week.”

A photo posted by Carriage House Birth (@carriagehousebirth) on Sep 4, 2016 at 5:16pm PDT

Doula service company Carriage House Birth uploaded the image to Instagram to great fanfare.

“Thank you for sharing. It is so amazing to see all the different ways that parents feed their babes,” one user said.

Some users even commented with their own stories of how they struggled to make their child latch.

“Remember doing this with my second daughter like it was yesterday. Had to work hard for that latch but we made it,” one user said.

McKeever told the Huffington Post she shared the image because she wanted new parents to let go of set expectations around motherhood.

“Things might not always go as planned in a perfect picture,” she said.

“Go with the flow and let go of expectations.”

Syringe-feeding a newborn is a perfectly acceptable way to nourish a baby that won’t latch.

Medical bodies such as the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne recommend it as a method of feeding expressed breast milk.

Source: Instagram: @carriagehousebirth.