Diabetes During Pregnancy
While you are pregnant, your body needs to create greater amounts of insulin to breakdown the sugar (glucose) in your blood and create energy from it. When your pancreas cannot create sufficient amounts of insulin to keep up with the level of glucose in your blood you get Gestational Diabetes. This occurs in 4% of pregnancies. The signs of gestational diabetes are similar to pregnancy symptoms, therefore, your doctor will need to give you a glucose test to find out whether or not you have gestational diabetes. This test is usually given sometime between the 24th and 28th week.
If you have gestational diabetes, your caregiver might have you counsel with a nutritionist to help you control your diet. You'll also want to get plenty of exercise and check your blood sugar level daily. If you're unable to manage your gestational diabetes with diet and exercise, you will need to inject insulin into your system daily.
Having gestational diabetes does cause some dangers for you and your baby. Your diabetes will usually go away a few weeks after giving birth. Your caregiver will continue to watch your blood sugar levels after you have given birth to make sure that your levels return to normal. From that point on you will have a higher risk of having diabetes in subsequent pregnancies as well as type 2 diabetes later on in life.
Glucose does cross the placenta and enter into your babys blood stream. If you have gestational diabetes, your baby will also have an increased level of glucose. His or her pancreas will put out greater amounts of insulin to assist in breaking down the extra glucose. Since the breakdown of glucose provides energy, the increased levels of glucose will cause the baby to keep the extra energy as fat. This can cause you to have a very heavy baby which may have to be removed by cesarean section.
Following birth, your baby may still be producing the excess insulin needed to breakdown the extra glucose collected from you. Since your baby isn't receiving the extra glucose from you, he/she may have low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia. A blood sample will be taken from your babys heel to check the blood sugar level. If your child's blood sugar level is minimal, you will want to breast feed as quickly as possible or give give the baby formula. Children whose mothers had gestational diabetes have a higher risk of becoming obese or of developing diabetes.
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About the Author
Having eight children of his own, Chris Dunn loves writing articles about labor for his pregnancy website.
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