Gestational Diabetes: What You Need to Know

Gestation diabetes is a type of diabetes that occurs only in pregnant women when the body is unable to handle the larger amount of insulin that is being produced.

Gestational diabetes affects over 15% of all pregnancies in the US each year. Women are at higher risk if they are:

Overweight

Over the age of thirty

Have a family history of diabetes

Gave birth to a baby over nine pounds in a previous pregnancy

While the chances of developing gestational diabetes for women with one or more of these risk factors, half of the women who develop gestational diabetes have no risk factors.

Most women who develop diabetes during their pregnancy will have no obvious signs, which is why most ob-gyns require a glucose challenge test between the 24 and 28 week of pregnancy. A glucose challenge test requires you to drink a glucose solution with your glucose level checked an hour afterward. If your results are abnormal, you will then take a glucose tolerance test. For this test, you will fast overnight and then take another glucose solution. Your blood will be checked every hour over a three hour period, as well as before you ingest the glucose solution.

To treat gestational diabetes, you will work with your ob-gyn to establish balanced meal plans to keep your blood sugar at a steady level. You will probably have to check your blood sugar level every morning an hour after you get up, as well after every meal that you eat. Regular physical activity can also help keep your blood sugar levels consistent.

Keeping your blood sugar levels steady is important for you and your baby. Babies whose mothers have unchecked gestational diabetes have a higher risk of excessive birth weight, which can increase birth trauma or the chances of c-section. In very rare cases, mothers who do not treat their gestational diabetes may suffer a stillbirth.

Mothers who are able to control their diabetes do not have any additional childbirth risks, though their provider will be more concerned about the size of the baby in the later weeks of pregnancy. Most doctors do not want mothers with gestational diabetes to go beyond their due date and will initiate labor or recommend a c-section if the baby is late or it seems that the baby is very large.

Babies of mothers with gestational diabetes may suffer from low blood sugar levels after the umbilical cord is cut, but breastfeeding early can help steady these levels. Furthermore, breastfeeding has been shown to reduce the chances of the baby having diabetes later in life, as it has also shown a reduced rate of mothers developing diabetes in later life.

Most women's blood sugar returns to a normal level after the birth of their baby. Your well woman care provider will check your level about six weeks after birth to ensure that it is normal again. Even so, women who have had gestational diabetes have an increased risk of developing it later in life (this may be reduced some by breastfeeding) and thus should have their blood sugar checked every three years. If you had gestational diabetes in one pregnancy, you may have it in another, but you may not.

Making sure you are at a healthy weight, physically active, and eating balanced meals before you get pregnant may help you reduce the rate of developing diabetes again.