Diabetes and Pregnancy

Women with no history of diabetes can develop the condition during pregnancy. This is known as gestational diabetes—the levels of glucose (sugar) in the blood increase because the body is not able to produce enough insulin, which moves the sugar from the blood into cells.

Usually diagnosed between the 24th and 28th weeks of pregnancy with an oral glucose tolerance test, gestational diabetes affects about 135,000 women in the United States every year. Most of the affected women are African-American or Hispanic and obese. Pregnant women have a higher risk of developing gestational diabetes if:

• they had gestational diabetes before
• their previous child weighed over 9 pounds at birth
• a previous child died in the womb or shortly after birth with no explanation
• a previous child had a birth defect

Although the high levels of sugar in the blood are not dangerous for the mother—in fact, often they do not cause symptoms—they can harm the baby. Gestational diabetes may lead to birth trauma and large size of the baby at birth. It may also result in the baby having low levels of sugar in the blood and jaundice. While not common, the baby could die in the womb.

To avoid these complications, women diagnosed with gestational diabetes need to use blood glucose monitoring systems to check their blood sugar levels.

Health care providers also closely monitor women with gestational diabetes and their fetus with non-stress tests and ultrasounds. In the non-stress test, doctors listen to the baby’s heart rate to make sure it does not accelerate too often over normal rates in a short period of time (for example, three accelerations in 20 minutes).

After delivery, the diabetes will go away in most women. However, within 5 to 10 years, up to 40% of them develop type 2 diabetes—especially obese women.