Gestational diabetes mellitus will affect pregnant women who have not been diagnosed with diabetes before but exhibit inappropriately higher than normal blood glucose levels during pregnancy. It is estimated about 3-7% of pregnant women are affected. Most women do not aware of the gestational diabetes mellitus and thus do nothing to control it. Fortunately, this will not causes birth defects that occasionally seen in babies whose mothers had diabetes before pregnancy as gestational diabetes only occurs around 24th to 28th week or the third trimester of pregnancy where the baby's body already formed.
Anyway, as people are getting richer and always practising unhealthy lifestyle and having unhealthy eating habits, gestational diabetes has become very common and pose treat to pregnant women. It may harm both the women and their babies if it were ignored, or has poor control over it. If this is the case, not only this may lead to macrosomia, or "fat" baby, the possibility for the women and the babies to develop diabetes mellitus type 2 in future is getting higher too.
Symptoms of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus
Women with gestational diabetes mellitus will have sign or symptoms of gestational diabetes mellitus such as frequent urination, vomiting, nausea, blurred vision, fatigue and lethargy as well as increased thirst and hunger.
Group of People With Higher Risk of Getting Gestational Diabetes Mellitus
Women with the following conditions are believed to have higher risk of developing gestational diabetes mellitus. These include woman who are over 35 years old, overweight, have a family history of type 2 diabetic mellitus patients, have had gestational diabetes in last pregnancies and those who are from Vietnamese, Chinese, Polynesian background.
Cause of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus
During pregnancy, the placenta which supports and supplies nourishment to the baby as it grows will produce hormones that help the baby to develop. However, these hormones will also block the mother's insulin to react to insulin receptors at the cellular level. This phenomenon is called insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance make it difficult for the insulin to bring the sugar into the cells for energy. The effect will increase when the placenta grows larger during pregnancy and produce more hormones. It may need 3 times more the normal amount of insulin during pregnancy. Normally, the mother's pancreas is able to produce about 3 times more insulin than the normal amount. If the pancreas cannot produce sufficient insulin to overcome the effect of the increased hormones during pregnancy, the glucose that accumulate in the blood system will causes the blood glucose level to increase. Eventually this will lead to gestational diabetes mellitus.
Risks To The Children
Due to the high glucose level, pancreas of mothers with gestational diabetes mellitus will need to work overtime to produce more insulin. However, this will not lower the blood glucose level. The extra blood glucose will goes through the placenta and thus increase the baby's blood glucose level.
To get rid of the glucose, baby's pancreas will produce more insulin too. However, if the glucose level is too high and as the baby do not need so much energy to grow, this extra blood glucose will be converted to fat and stored in the baby's tissue, leading to a "fat" baby or macrosomia.
Babies with macrosomia may injure their shoulders (shoulder dystocia) during birth. They may also have very low blood glucose level at birth because of the extra insulin in their body. This excess insulin may further cause them to develop childhood obesity and finally Type 2 diabetes mellitus in their adulthood. They may have jaundice too.
Risks To The Pregnant Women
The risk of getting Type 2 diabetes mellitus and pre-eclampsia is higher if you suffer gestational diabetes mellitus during pregnancy. Furthermore, you may need to have caesarean section too if you do not keep your gestational diabetes mellitus under control, as fat babies is more difficult for vaginal deliveries. Diabetic women may also face difficulty to heal well after surgery, and thus has greater risk of getting infection.
Treatment of Gestational Diabetes Mellitus
If you have gestational diabetes mellitus during pregnancy, do not worry too much as it is a treatable condition. If you have a good control of your diet to reduce the blood glucose level, you can effectively reduce the risk and avoid such complications to you and your children totally. Therefore it is very important for pregnant women to eat healthily.
