What are the signs of gestational diabetes?
If you are planning on getting pregnant it is important that you know the signs of gestational diabetes. Finding out the relationship between this type of diabetes and pregnancy and how it can affect you is rather very important. Some of the gestational diabetes signs are similar to the signs of type 2 diabetes mellitus. It is characterised by very high blood sugar levels. Whenever diabetes mellitus is diagnosed during pregnancy it is called gestational diabetes mellitus. When diagnosed before pregnancy but when a woman to trying to conceive it is called pre gestational diabetes mellitus. Pre gestational diabetes has to be monitored to ensure that when the woman does get pregnant the health of both the baby and the mother is look after. What are these initial or beginning signs of gestational diabetes to look out for? The signs of this type of diabetes are sometimes not present at all or they can be confused with conditions experienced during normal pregnancy. These include:
During the pregnancy period it should be made routine to be screening for this condition as part of your prenatal care. It becomes more important that you are screened if you display any of the above early symptoms of diabetes mellitus or are a member of the high risk group. The high risk group include:
How is gestational diabetes diagnosed? Your doctor could recommend a glucose challenge test between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy because the condition can't usually be detected earlier. The test consists of drinking a sugar solution then your blood will be tested an hour later. If the blood sugar is over 140 mg/dl, in the first test, a second test is done. Your health care professional may also have you do a fasting glucose test. How does it work? After fasting overnight, your doctor will give you a highly concentrated glucose solution. S/he will test your blood sugar levels every hour afterwards for three hours. If at least two of the test shows abnormally high blood sugar levels you will be diagnosed as having gestational diabetes. Doing these tests is the only accurate way of diagnosing diabetes during the gestational period. How is gestational diabetes treated? Gestational diabetes is normally treated in the first instance with proper diet management, exercise and a weight loss programme – if overweight or obese. If these measures do not work then medications may be prescribed.
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