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Pregnant women are often afraid about the word Diabetes. Gestational Diabetes Mellitus is a condition that only affects pregnant women. As per statistics, there are approximately 250,000 cases of gestational diabetes every year in the US.

Safety And Monitoring

However, having this form of diabetes and a pregnancy that continues normally is entirely possible. If a woman appears to be at risk, her doctor will likely conduct a test from between 24-28 weeks. If the test is positive, exercising and monitoring both your diet and your blood sugar levels should be adequate in most cases.

Your health care provider will tell you exactly what to do. In some cases insulin injections may be necessary, but the baby should be fine. After birth, gestational diabetes mellitus generally disappears within about two months. However, this may be a warning sign of future diabetes and will need to be tracked by your health care provider.

If you plan to have another child and you had gestational diabetes during your earlier pregnancies, always be sure to consult with your physician. You should have your blood glucose levels tested a few months before making an attempt to get pregnant again.

Preeclampsia And Diabetes

For those with gestational diabetes or pre-existing diabetes, a healthy pregnancy and safe delivery are, again, generally the norm. Unfortunately, diabetes does increase the risk of the condition known as preeclampsia that can affect pregnant women.

What is preeclampsia?

Preeclampsia is a hypertensive condition (high blood pressure) experienced by between five to eight percent of pregnant women that can put stress on the kidneys and liver. It can also lead to edema of the lungs, increase the risk of blood clots and cause seizures during the birth as well.

Preeclampsia can even kill, and for those with gestational diabetes there is an approximately 15% increase in the risk factor for this condition. For those with pre-existing diabetes, that risk factor goes up to 30%, and the condition is most common in a first-time pregnancy. Your health care provider will no doubt be monitoring for such things.

Although diabetes and pregnancy can scare you, chances are that you can look forward to a happy and normal delivery. You need to exercise caution and be prudent and monitor your health closely together with your physician so that any such anomalies can be detected early and treated without any unwanted complications.

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