Rebecca Cook and baby went into a Victoria's Secret store. The mother needed to feed her child so she asked whether she could use a dressing room to breast feed her baby girl. An employee told her there was no available room there. Rebecca Cook said she would not mind sitting at the back of the dressing room hallway. The employee said this was not acceptable and told her to nurse her baby in the staff toilets.

Cook said that she does not eat in toilets and that her daughter doesn't either.

Limited Brands, Inc. is the parent company of Victoria's Secret. A spokesman said the company apologises for the incident. He said the company does have a policy of allowing mothers to nurse in its stores.

The word soon got around of a nursing mother with a similar problem at another Victoria's Secret store in Massachusetts.

Nursing mothers began to protest. 15 mothers breast-fed their babies outside a store in Westlake, Cleveland, Ohio. Breast-feeding in public places has been legal in Ohio since last year.

The mothers' message is a simple one - breast-feeding is not dirty, it is not something that has to be done in a toilet.

The company said posters will be placed in all stores reminding employees of a nursing mother's right to breast-feed her child at the store.

It is ironic that a company that promotes many of its products using posters of scantily-clad women with large breasts should squirm at the thought of the breast's natural function - feeding a child.

Sometimes society can be baffling. Many will not bat an eyelid at the sight of a dog defecating in the street but will be offended when a mother feeds her baby the natural way in public.