Management of Gestational Diabetes

The management of gestational diabetes is important to help minimize or prevent the complications that can be associated with gestational diabetes in both the mother and the baby. Diagnosis of the condition is usually accomplished through routine screening tests done as a part of pre-natal care. Once the diagnosis is made, midwives and/or physicians will generally recommened gestational diabetes treatment to help control blood glucose levels during pregnancy.

While being diagnosed with gestational diabetes may be a shock to pregnant mothers and initially cause a great deal of fear and anxiety, most women who work hard to manage the condition can have a healthy pregnancy and baby. However, management of gestational diabetes requires a commitment by the woman to stick to a treatment regimen that often requires lifestyle changes and making choices to improve your overall health.

Some of the changes that are important to help control blood glucose levels in gestational diabetes include improving diet and exercise. Your physician, midwife and/or a registered nutritionist/dietitian can help to give you healthy eating guidelines to live by. Limiting carbohydrates and sugars go a long way toward controlling blood sugar and weight gain. Regular exercise is vital to the management of gestational diabetes as well. Exercise improves insulin function, reduces blood sugar levels and aids in maintaining a healthy weight, all of which help to control and prevent the negative impact that gestational diabetes can have.

In addition to these lifestyle and dietary changes that the woman must be actively participating in, there are some medical management components to monitoring and treating gestational diabetes. For example, most women will be asked to monitor their blood glucose levels. This is the best way to get immediate feedback about your treatment and to see if the changes you are making are working. It can also help identify the things that you are doing, or not doing, that are leading to higher blood sugar readings. The goal of treatment of course is to keep the levels in a target healthy range.

Women with gestational diabetes should of course be having frequent medical check-ups to help track their blood sugar control progress and to monitor fetal growth, development and health, which may involve ultrasounds to track growth and other testing to identify any problems with the baby's well-being.

Most women with gestational diabetes can control their blood sugar within safe ranges with diet and exercise. However, in those women who cannot control glucose adequately, treatment with insulin shots may be suggested. Insulin is safe for the baby and helps the mother to bring down glucose levels into the normal range.

Delivering your baby may be no different from any other pregnancy if you have closely controlled blood glucose levels. In fact, just because you are diagnosed with gestational diabetes does not mean that you have to have a C-section. However, in some cases where blood glucose levels were not well controlled, fetal growth may be excessive and a natural delivery may be difficult or unsafe. In these cases, C-section may be recommended.

Finally, monitoring and management of gestational diabetes does not stop at birth. After delivery both the mother and baby's blood sugars are generally monitored closely. In most women, their blood glucose levels return to normal rather quickly after delivery. If the glucose levels were high through much of pregnancy, the baby may make too much insulin immediately after delivery which can lead to the opposite after delivery, hypoglycemia or low blood sugar. This is why the baby must be monitored closely as well and if hypoglycemia occurs sugar can be given quickly to restore normal levels.