This is from the Children's Liver Disease Foundation website. It says nothing about giving up breastfeeding. Who says you have to give it up? Why?
Breast Milk Jaundice
Posted: 17 August 2004
You are advised to read the section on Baby Jaundice before reading below.
Sometimes jaundice continues after the baby is 14 days old in a full-term baby and 21 days in a premature baby. If the baby is breast fed then quite frequently parents are reassured that it is breast milk jaundice, which is harmless and will go away with time. It is important however that this diagnosis is made by testing. The vast majority of babies will have breast milk jaundice but a very few will have liver disease jaundice - or even both.
In these babies it is vital that the following is carried out:
The colour of the stools and urine are checked
The urine of a newly born baby should be colourless.
The stools of a breast fed baby should be green / daffodil yellow colour.
The stools of a bottle fed baby should be green / English mustard colour
If the urine is yellow and / or the stools pale this can indicate liver disease and you should report this to your midwife, health visitor or doctor.
A split bilirubin blood test.
This measures the ratios of the conjugated and unconjugated bilirubin levels in the blood. If the conjugated fraction is greater than 20% of the total bilirubin the baby should be referred to a specialist paediatric liver unit for investigation as this indicates that the cause is a liver disease.
Some babies who are breast fed may have jaundice which continues but the blood levels are perfectly normal except for the raised total bilirubin. In these cases the stool and urine colour is normal. A diagnosis of breast milk jaundice is often given. Breast milk jaundice is harmless and will gradually disappear. In a small number of cases it can take a few months to totally disappear.
Breast milk jaundice is common. It is important that if jaundice persists a split bilirubin test is carried out so a diagnosis is made based on fact rather than an assumption.
My baby has breast milk jaundice, what should happen now?
CLDF's experience is that most parents want to be reassured that the baby's bilirubin level is returning to normal. Initially, it is suggested that the serum bilirubin level is measured weekly until the bilirubin level returns to normal. In cases where the jaundice takes a long time to diminish, the jaundice level can be tested further apart, providing the trend is that the bilirubin level is reducing.