Breast-milk Jaundice and Oral Contraceptives

Among breast-fed infants in the normal lying-in wards of a maternity hospital a significantly higher incidence of “idiopathic” jaundice was found in infants of mothers who had been receiving the contraceptive pill before the present pregnancy than in the infants whose mothers never had the pill. The pill became widely used in society at about the same time as breast-milk jaundice was first reported.