Clove Oil and Pregnancy: Never Without Medical Advice

Clove essential oil should be avoided during pregnancy without explicit medical advice, including as a diluted skin application. Our article clove and pregnancy confirms that clove used as a culinary spice poses no identified problem for this period, but that it is very different for the essential oil, which is rich in eugenol.

This article completes our reference article clove oil with the still-missing pregnancy angle, closing the five-part series already published for this oil.

Why This Essential Oil Calls for Particular Caution

Our review section recalls the clinical case documented by Janes, Price and Thomas, published in 2005, of acute liver failure in an infant after ingesting clove essential oil — an extreme but telling example of the potency of this eugenol-concentrated oil (see the study on Google Scholar). This case concerns an accidental ingestion in a child, not skin use in a pregnant woman, but it illustrates why this essential oil, among the most concentrated in active compounds in the herbal pharmacopoeia, should never be handled without extreme caution — all the more so during pregnancy, a period for which no safety data exists.

Eugenol also has a theoretical antiplatelet effect at high doses, already flagged in our article on the herb for people on anticoagulant treatment. This same caution extends by analogy to pregnancy, where any insufficiently documented active substance is presumed best avoided rather than presumed safe.

Culinary Spice and Essential Oil: Two Different Logics

Form	Assessment During Pregnancy
Whole clove in a dish or drink	No known problem at usual culinary doses
Whole clove against toothache, occasional use	Not specifically called into question by pregnancy, for a few-minute occasional use
Essential oil applied to the skin, even diluted	To be avoided without medical advice throughout pregnancy
Essential oil taken internally or dental use	Formally to be ruled out during pregnancy

The Whole-Clove Toothache Remedy Remains a Different Case

As our article on the herb notes, the traditional gesture of placing a whole clove against a sore gum, for an occasional use of a few minutes, is not called into question by pregnancy. This tolerance does not extend to the essential oil, however, whose eugenol concentration bears no comparison to that of a whole clove chewed or pressed against the gum.

What to Do in Practice

• Cooking: continue using whole or ground clove at usual culinary doses;
• Occasional toothache: the whole clove remains a traditional option, but persistent dental pain during pregnancy calls for a dental consultation;
• Essential oil: to be avoided throughout pregnancy, whatever dilution is considered;
• After pregnancy and breastfeeding: the essential oil can be reintroduced by strictly following the dilutions detailed in our dosage section.

What About Breastfeeding?

Usual culinary doses pose no known problem during breastfeeding. The essential oil and concentrated extracts remain, here too, best avoided without medical advice, following the same precautionary logic applied to all the concentrated essential oils in this series.

Precautions

In summary, cooking with clove during pregnancy, in usual small quantities, carries no identified risk. It is the eugenol-concentrated essential oil that should be avoided without medical advice during this period, as with most essential oils in this series. To learn more, see our article clove oil: dangers and precautions, our Ayurveda and pregnancy guide and the safety and precautions guide.