Getting pregnant- How gestational diabetes can affect you during pregnancy?
Getting pregnant and becoming mother is the one of the most wonderful feeling for every woman. Pregnancy wellness requires a lot of care and attention towards mother and child. During pregnancy, mother has to be extra careful for her unborn baby. She is advised to eat only those things which can help in the development of the fetus. So, the bottom line is that a pregnant woman has to be very care full about her own health and development of her unborn baby. As requires a lots of care but still many women are there who suffers from many different type of pregnancy problems. As we all know that getting pregnant and starting your own family is the most precious feeling but it brings a lot chaos with it which is generally known as . These pregnancy complications include high blood pressure, weight gain, nausea, morning sickness, backache, anemia and the most important gestational diabetes. This diabetes is mainly occurs during the time of pregnancy and that’s because it is also known aspregnancy diabetes. Gestational diabetes is the most common among health issue for women during pregnancy. This type of diabetes is affecting almost 10 percent of women in the world.
What is gestational diabetes?
Gestational diabetes is most similar with normal diabetes. is a condition when your body doesn’t respond to sugar which you generally observe from carbohydrates’ or directly from sugar. According to health expert, it has not been found yet that what exactly causes the condition of diabetes but some most popular factors are there which can be linked like, overweight or obesity, genes, excessive use of sugary product and high blood pressure. You must have heard that pregnant woman should eat for two or she has to gain a certain amount of weight for proper development of the baby but these are only misconception. Health experts say that in order to maintain a healthy pregnancy, mother has to take only 300 calories a day and only 30 to 45 pounds of weight should be increased. Weight of pregnant woman increases automatically when her baby’s weight increases in womb. Mother has not supposed to do anything to gain weight during pregnancy. Efforts for gaining weight during pregnancy may causeseveral types of health issues including gestational diabetes.
Causes of gestational diabetes
Physicians say that gestational diabetes can affect those women also who have never have any type of diabetes. They say there is no exact findings about what causes gestational diabetes but some clues have been found. Placenta which is connected to you and your baby for the supply of nutrients for the growth and development. As you eat food and after digestion it produces sugar. This sugar enters in your blood stream and your pancreas produces insulin. Insulin is a kind of hormone which helps the sugar (glucose) move from bloodstream to your body in order to generate energy. But during the pregnancy time placenta which connects your baby produces several other hormones. These hormones impair the action of insulin in your cells which raises the level of blood glucose in your body. As the baby grows, placenta produces more and more hormones which can block the action of mother’s body to use insulin. This problem is known as insulin resistance. When pregnant woman’s body is not able toproduce and use all the insulin which is required for the pregnancy then gestational diabetes occurs.
Risk factors of gestational diabetes
Gestational diabetes generally occurs after half of the pregnancy. It occurs when your baby’s body has formed and busy in growth. Generally it doesn’t affect baby and the growth of baby but poorly controlled and undiagnosed condition may lead your baby to some problems. Pancreas works overtime in order to produce more insulin when mother get affected by gestational diabetes but these insulin doesn’t help to lower the level of blood glucose. Higher level of blood glucose reaches to baby through placenta giving the baby high level of blood glucose. This high blood glucose level of baby’s pancreas makes extra insulin to cut blood sugar. As baby gets more energy than the normal requirement for the growth, the extra energy is stored ad fat. This type of health problem can cause macrosomia or fat baby. Baby who comes in the category of macrosomia may suffer from some types of health issues like damage of their shoulders during delivery. Baby can also suffer from low blood sugar at the timeof birth as the baby’s pancreas made extra insulin and higher risk of breathing problems. The biggest risk of gestational diabetes actually happens when baby is delivered and who is used to being exposed to higher level of glucose is now not getting any glucose in mother’s milk and still baby’s body is realizing the sugar absorbing hormones. In this condition baby’s blood sugar drops down and leads the baby at the risk of seizure and coma. According to health experts, macrosomic babies are at the higher risk of obesity and when they grow adult, they develop the risk of type 2 diabetes.
Symptoms of gestational diabetes
Generally gestational diabetes doesn’t show any symptoms but you can track it by testing for the condition. Test of gestational diabetes is done during 24th and 28th weeks of pregnancy. Sometimes you can find some symptoms of gestational diabetes in pregnant woman. Those symptoms are
- Increased thirst
- Increased frequency of urination
- Increased hunger
- Blurred vision
Many women feel more frequency of urination and increased hunger but it doesn’t mean that pregnant woman is having gestational diabetes. If you have these symptoms, you can visit your doctor so that you will be tested. It is a very important task for every pregnant woman to be tested for gestational diabetes. High blood glucose level is not only harmful for pregnant mother but it is more harmful for baby too. If it possible you can seek the heath cares early before getting pregnant so your doctor can evaluate risk of gestational diabetes as a pregnancy wellness plan. .
