Pregnancy and Diabetes

You have diabetes and you just found out you're pregnant! Like other women, you feel the joy and the fear of bringing a child into this world.
If you have diabetes, you will have to face more problems during pregnancy. But the greatest challenge is to keep your blood sugar under control. With your doctor, you can monitor your blood sugar and prevent complications throughout pregnancy.
During pregnancy, your most important goal is to keep your blood sugar under control. One of the ways to do that is intensive insulin therapy, which involves monitoring your blood glucose frequently and using different types of insulin, in different doses, depending on blood sugar and diet changes. Your doctor should tell you what the optimal level of glucose is.

The effects of medication on the foetus are not known, so staying away from drug treatment will help. However, intensive insulin therapy helps you better control your blood sugar.

Women who do not suffer from diabetes, but are gestational diabetics can use oral medications, because the disease appears only in the second quarter, when children's bodies are formed and there is no danger of producing congenital diseases.

Your doctor will tell you how to take insulin, if you switch to intensive insulin therapy, and how often you must measure the blood sugar. You do not have to wonder why you measure it a lot. Your body suffers rapid changes to help the child.

Blood glucose control is important for you and the baby. If, during the first 6-8 weeks of pregnancy (when the heart, lungs, kidneys and the brain of the foetus form), your blood sugar is high, the child may develop congenital diseases. But you can also suffer a miscarriage. If your body has too little insulin, the acids in the blood may cause miscarriage.
Later, during pregnancy, extremely high blood sugar can cause the death of the child, and less extreme levels of glucose may force the child to grow more than it would be normal, thus making the birth more complicated.

If your blood sugar is high, the child could be born with a very low blood sugar, which required emergency treatment. Another possible complication is a yellowish skin, due to accumulation of old blood cells that the baby’s liver can not remove quickly enough.

Complications that can occur in pregnant women with diabetes include high blood pressure, worsening of complications caused by diabetes, especially eye diseases.