I had gestational diabetes with my most recent pregnancy. The thing to remember is that even without treatment, the likelihood of serious complications is small. Most gestational diabetes can be treated with diet and exercise. In fact, the numbers used to diagnose gestational diabetes are often conservative, and wouldn’t indicate Type II diabetes in the average non-pregnant individual. That said, the possible serious complications include things like stillbirth and pre-enclampsia. Therefore, keeping your blood sugar on an even keel is a really good idea. The most common problem from gestational diabetes, from what I was told, is what they call Macrosomia, or “big baby”. This is a baby over 10 pounds.
Most likely, you’re going to start by keeping an very detailed food diary, and checking blood sugar after waking up in the morning and after each meal, at least. Your doctor or midwife will tell you what numbers you should be looking for, but they’re likely to be something like under 100 and under 120 2 hours after a meal. The diabetes diet is light on simple carbs, medium on proteins, and heavy on veggies, but your doctor/midwife/dietician will give you details. Light exercise, like swimming or a 30 min walk after each meal, may be added, as might certain diabetes medications. Be wary of adding the medications, because you’ll be walking a thin line between sugars not going to high and baby not getting enough. Baby not getting enough is far more dangerous than baby getting too much.
Some things to watch out for from care providers: care providers may be far more willing to “cut first, ask questions later”. Some providers like to do late-stage ultrasounds, and induce/operate for “large baby” based on those estimates. Those estimates can be off by 2 pounds. So the technician may estimate 8 pounds, and the baby could be 6. Or ten, of course. Providers are trained to find problems, and will be looking more intensely at you, and therefore might “overdiagnose” problems. This is not to say that this will happen to you, but to remind you that the most important thing you can do is to educate yourself, ask questions, and remember that you have full autonomy over your body and the body of your child. Just as when the child is 5, you have the final say in what happens to him or her medically. There is a significant chance that an early induced or sectioned baby may not be quite ready for the outside world yet. The “due date” is an estimation, with a 2 week margin of error. You have the right to say no to anything, and you have the right to say YES to anything.
I want to tell you that I am not a doctor, I am a mother. I have no medical training. I am not giving you medical advice. I am requesting that you ask questions, do research, and advocate for yourself and your baby. Gestational Diabetes can either be very serious or barely significant, and you will not know which camp you’re in until after you have a new baby in your arms. I was lucky to have a very easily controlled case, and have a healthy little girl. I hope you can someday say something very similar. Best of luck to you!
