Drinking rooibos while breastfeeding
We could find no study of rooibos in breastfeeding women. Nothing measuring whether its compounds reach breast milk, in what quantity, or what a nursing infant is exposed to as a result.
The reference that would normally answer this is LactMed — the US National Institutes of Health's Drugs and Lactation Database, which is what a pharmacist or doctor checks when a nursing mother asks about a substance. It carries entries for a long list of herbal products: raspberry, vervain, hibiscus, fenugreek, fennel, goat's rue.
It has no entry for rooibos. Not a cautious one, not a reassuring one. The question has not been assessed.
The one thing that can be said without qualification is compositional: rooibos contains no caffeine. For a mother watching her caffeine intake while feeding, that is a real and checkable difference from ordinary tea or coffee, and it is not a claim about her milk.
- Raspberry
- Vervain
- Hibiscus
- Fenugreek
- Fennel
- Goat's rue
- Rooibos — no entry
Rooibos sold as a nursing or lactation tea
Rooibos appears as the base of blends sold for nursing mothers, and people search for those by name and by shop. So it is worth separating two things that the packaging tends to blur.
There is no evidence that rooibos increases milk supply. No trial, no measurement, nothing. If a nursing blend does anything, the ingredient doing it is not the rooibos.
The herbs traditionally used for that purpose — fenugreek and fennel among them — are the ones with entries in LactMed, precisely because they are the ones somebody has looked at. Rooibos in these blends is usually doing what rooibos does well: it is a caffeine-free base that tastes pleasant. That is a perfectly good reason for it to be there, and it is not a lactation claim.
So the useful habit is the same one as in pregnancy: read the ingredients list rather than the name on the front, and take that list to a midwife, a lactation consultant or a pharmacist. Why blends are the real question.
Giving rooibos to a baby
This is where this page stops saying “nobody knows”, because on this question there is something to know, and it is not about rooibos at all.
The World Health Organization position is that infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life — which it defines as no other foods or liquids, including water. A cup of rooibos for a three-month-old is not outside that guidance by a little. Water is outside that guidance.
And giving rooibos to very young babies is a documented, ordinary practice in South Africa. A 2020 study of infant feeding in Soweto records it plainly: tea, usually decaffeinated rooibos, and water were given to babies from a very young age. A separate study of informal workers in India and South Africa — co-authored from the WHO's own maternal and child health department — found mothers returning to work adding formula, other milks and rooibos as a non-nutritive fluid alongside or in place of breastmilk.
The concern South African clinicians raise is not that rooibos is toxic. It is that rooibos has no nutritional value, and a baby filled with it is a baby not drinking milk.
Tembisa Hospital's spokesperson, quoted in 2019, put it as rooibos being given instead of the nutritious milk feeds that support rapid growth in the first few years, especially under three. A dietician quoted in the same report said the liquids used this way — tea among them — lack the protein, carbohydrate and fat a baby's growth depends on.
That is a warning about displacement, and displacement is invisible on an ingredients list. It is why “is rooibos safe for babies” is the wrong question, and “what is this tea taking the place of” is the right one.
None of that makes rooibos a villain. A toddler eating a full diet who has some rooibos is in a completely different situation from a four-month-old being given tea instead of a feed. The age and what else the child is getting are the whole of the question, and neither of them is answerable by a website.
What we will not do is give you an age. You will find sites that name one — including sites run by rooibos brands. We are not a paediatric authority and we are not going to print a number that a parent might act on. Ask a clinic nurse, a paediatrician or a dietician, who can ask you the things that actually determine the answer.
Colic, and where that claim comes from
Rooibos for a colicky baby is one of the oldest things said about this plant in South Africa, and it is the reason a great many families keep it in the house.
No trial has tested it. We searched and found nothing measuring rooibos against infant colic in any form. What exists is long, widespread traditional use — which is a real thing, and is not the same thing as evidence.
It is worth saying why this particular claim spread as far as it did, because the history is interesting rather than sinister: rooibos was promoted for infants in South Africa from the middle of the twentieth century, and that promotion, rather than any trial, is what put it in the cupboard. The plant's history is on this site; the clinical question behind it has simply never been asked in a study.
If your baby is inconsolable, the thing that matters is a clinician ruling out the causes that need attention. A tea is not a way of finding that out.
Who to ask, since it should not be us
- A clinic nurse, midwife or lactation consultant for anything about feeding. They will ask the child's age, weight and what else it is getting, which is where the answer actually lives.
- A pharmacist for anything you are drinking yourself alongside medicine. What is documented about rooibos and medicines.
- Bring the box. For a blended tea, the ingredient worth asking about is usually not the rooibos.
An independent guide to the region where rooibos grows. Nobody here is a doctor, a midwife, a dietician or a paediatrician. This page reports published research and named public statements, and links them so you can check us. It is not advice, and it is not a reason to change what you are doing with a child. How this site works.