Gestational Diabetes Complications: How Can Diabetes Affect Your Baby And How Can You Prevent It?

Gestational diabetes is a type of diabetes that develops during pregnancy. Gestational diabetes, like other types of diabetes, appears because the blood levels of glucose are too high.

Fortunately, gestational diabetes is usually easy to control using a combination of regular exercise, a healthy diet as instructed by your OBGYN, and sometimes medication to manage your blood glucose levels.

As long you as keep your blood sugar levels under control, you should be able to have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby even with gestational diabetes.

What causes gestational diabetes?

Gestation diabetes develops because pregnant women produce hormones that counter the effects of insulin, the hormone that helps metabolize glucose — and this situation, in which insulin cannot be used as effectively as before, is called insulin resistance. Because pregnancy leads to the production of specific hormones, it is common for pregnant women to have a moderate increase in blood glucose levels.

However, as the baby continues to grow, the placenta keeps producing more of these hormones, leading to a spike in your blood glucose levels, which can lead to gestational diabetes. Therefore, most times, gestational diabetes develops in the latter half of the pregnancy (around 20 weeks).

So why do some women develop gestational diabetes while others don’t? While it is not known exactly why gestational diabetes develops, researchers have identified specific risk factors that put you at a higher risk of developing diabetes during pregnancy. These risk factors include:

• Being older than 25. Women over the age of 25 are more likely to develop gestational diabetes.
• Family history. If you have a close relative who has type 2 diabetes or who had gestational diabetes, you are more likely to have gestational diabetes during your own pregnancy as well. If you already had pregnancy diabetes before, you are also at a higher risk of developing it again during a subsequent pregnancy.
• Prediabetes. If you have been diagnosed with prediabetes, a condition in which blood sugar levels are slightly higher than normal but not high enough to warrant a diagnosis of diabetes, you are more likely to have gestational diabetes.
• Overweight or obesity.
• Ethnicity. Many ethnicities, such as Black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian are more likely to develop gestational diabetes.

What complications can gestational diabetes cause?

While most women who suffer from gestational diabetes are able to manage their blood glucose levels and have successful pregnancies, complications can result from gestational diabetes. Specifically, there are complications that can affect your baby if your blood glucose levels are not well-controlled. These include:

1. A higher likelihood of requiring a cesarean section.
2. A higher likelihood of having a baby with a high birth weight. This is because the extra glucose in your blood stream causes the baby to produce more insulin, which can lead your baby to becoming very large. While having a heavy baby in itself is not too bad, babies who weigh nine pounds or more are at risk of becoming wedged in the birth canal, which is dangerous. (This is also by a c-section is more likely.)
3. Early, preterm birth. High blood sugar levels can increase the risk of having an early labor. Babies born preterm can have several complications as their organs may not be fully formed.
4. Respiratory distress syndrome. This is a condition in which preterm babies have difficulty breathing because their lungs are not fully formed yet. Hence, these babies may need help breathing until their lungs are stronger. Respiratory distress can also occur in children who are not born preterm but whose moms had gestational diabetes.
5. Hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, is a condition in which blood glucose levels are too low. Some babies born to women with gestational diabetes have hypoglycemia shortly after birth. This can be especially dangerous because hypoglycemia can cause seizures. However, a quick feed and a glucose IV can return glucose levels to normal.
6. Type 2 diabetes. Babies born to women with gestational diabetes are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes later on in life.

Prevention: How can you avoid gestational diabetes?

While there is no guarantee that you will be able to prevent gestational diabetes, chances are, the sooner you adopt healthier habits before you become pregnant or early on in your pregnancy, the less likely you are to develop gestational diabetes.

In fact, if you had gestational diabetes during a prior pregnancy, adopting healthy habits right after can reduce your risk of developing gestational diabetes again in a future pregnancy and reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes later on in life.

These are the some of the ways in which you can reduce your risk of developing gestational diabetes:

• Lose weight. While you shouldn’t lose weight once you are already pregnant, if you are planning on becoming pregnant then losing weight before will help reduce the risk of suffering from gestational diabetes, if your weight is on the heavy side.
• Exercise. It is well-known that exercising helps moderate and manage your blood glucose levels. Exercising regularly both during and before your pregnancy can help keep gestational diabetes at bay. There are several great exercises you can do to stay active, even during pregnancy. These include low-impact exercises such as swimming, walking or biking.
• Eat healthy. It is important to eat a healthy diet and stay away from refined sugar, processed and high-calorie foods as these will cause a spike in your blood sugar levels and increase your risk of getting gestational diabetes. Foods to incorporate in your diet include fruits, vegetables, whole grains.