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Gestational Diabetes

What is Pregnancy-induced diabetes mellitus?

Gestational Diabetes – Pregnancy-induced diabetes is a type of diabetes that can only happen during your pregnancy. It is important to seek good treatment such as Gestational Diabetes Insulin (if necessary) to save the baby’s potential growth development risks. The baby may grow larger than usual, have breathing difficulties at birth, have increased risk of jaundice and fits. Once you deliver the baby, you no longer will have Gestational Diabetes (Pregnancy-induced diabetes). However, your chances of developing Type 2 diabetes 50-90% in the next ten years – put of every 10 women with diabetes in pregnancy – 9 will have Type 2 diabetes within next 10 years.

My approach:

Treatment of Gestational Diabetes

  1. I avoid blaming or shaming the patient in any way, and it is not something someone chooses to develop.
  2. I take a positive perspective that it’s better to know there is a problem to take care of it and achieve good sugar control. It will ensure a good outcome for both mother and the baby.
  3. Empower the patient by teaching target levels for blood sugars during pregnancy, so they can monitor their values (with a home glucose meter) and come to me only if there is a problem (not meeting goal sugars – FBS < 90 and after food < 120 mg/dl)
  4. Gestational Diabetes insulin – Teach women taking insulin to inject insulin by themselves, so they control their health and not depend on others.
  5. Make the experience comfortable for the pregnant woman and avoid repeated visits to the clinic/hospital (especially during COVID pandemic) by communicating by calls, emails and what’s app messaging to ensure continuous care by the safest means.
  6. Most importantly, we explain the risk of future diabetes to ALL pregnant women and encourage them to keep checking sugar levels even after delivery. Women often neglect their health after the baby is born.
  7. We discourage excess calorie intake while breastfeeding (usually women are fed laddoos and ghee to optimise milk production), not realising that failure to lose weight or weight gain after delivery due to excess calories place the woman at high risk of diabetes in future. We emphasis on Gestational Diabetes Diet plan to maintain the optimal sugar levels during pregnancy.