Sometimes women who have never had diabetes develop high blood sugar during pregnancy. This condition is known as gestational diabetes mellitus, and it is one of pregnancy's more common complications. Blood sugar levels usually return back to normal after the baby is born; however, if gestational diabetes is not controlled it can cause problems for both mother and baby, and gestational diabetes can also indicate that a woman is at high risk for developing type II diabetes later on.
Pregnant women need a lot of insulin - often up to three times as much as they did before getting pregnant. When you're pregnant, both your body and the placenta are making hormones that partly block the effects of insulin. This is to help the baby grow and develop, but in some women it can cause blood glucose levels to become too high.
When this happens, the mother could experience extreme fatigue, thirst or hunger. More likely, she won't even notice. Gestational diabetes rarely reveals itself through symptoms. This is why many physicians recommend screening for the disease in almost all women between 24-28 weeks of pregnancy, when hormones that cause insulin resistance reach their peak. The screening involves drinking a sugary drink, then taking blood samples in order to monitor glucose levels.
Risk factors alone have about a 50% chance of indicating who will develop gestational diabetes. These factors include being over age 25, being overweight, having a family history of diabetes, and belonging to certain ethnic/racial groups such as African-American, Hispanic, Asian-American, Pacific Islander, and Native American.
If these risk factors sound like the risk factors for type II diabetes, it's because they are. Gestational diabetes and type II diabetes are very similar illnesses. About 90% of women suffering from gestational diabetes either had (pre-pregnancy) a deficiency of insulin receptors or a tendency to gain weight around the abdomen.
Other risk factors: having gestational diabetes in a earlier pregnancy, or having previously had a very large baby (over 9 1/2 pounds) or a stillborn baby.
WHAT GESTATIONAL DIABETES CAN DO
If gestational diabetes is untreated or poorly controlled, it can cause problems for both mother and baby. In addition to indicating a tendency to develop type II diabetes later on, gestational diabetes can put pregnant women at a higher risk for hypertension, urinary tract infections and preeclampsia ( a condition that affects the kidneys, liver, and placenta). Women with gestational diabetes also run a higher risk of having a c-section.
Gestational diabetes doesn't cause the same kinds of birth defects that are sometimes seen
