Pregnancy Signs & Symptoms, Week by Week Pregnancy Guide

A lot of people know many things about diabetes itself, but only a few know about pregnancy and diabetes. Diabetes is known to be a condition characterized by the fact that the sugar or glucose levels are too high in your blood. Having a high blood sugar level is never good for the baby.

According to statistics, about 3-8% of all pregnant women in the U.S. get a condition called gestational diabetes. This is a condition that you should know about regarding being pregnant and diabetes because this is a special kind of diabetes that appears for the first time while you are pregnant and it goes away after giving birth. The downside is that if you have gestational diabetes, your chances of getting diabetes later get higher.

In case you have diabetes before you get pregnant, you will have to closely monitor your blood sugar level and control it. No matter what kind of diabetes you have, having diabetes while being pregnant is never good for the mother or the baby.

You should have a meal plan, an exercise plan and also medication, not to mention the blood tests.

Pregnancy and diabetes that is preexisting

About 9% of women have diabetes in the United States. The sad truth is that about three of nine women don’t know about their condition. In case you are planning to get pregnant and you have diabetes, the doctor will want to monitor your condition closely. Those women who choose to get pregnant while diagnosed with diabetes are considered to have a high-risk pregnancy.

You don’t have to consider this as a certainty that you will have problems. This only means that your doctor will take more care of you and you may have to seek other specialists as well to make sure that your pregnancy goes smoothly.

Before getting pregnant

Having diabetes while being pregnant is never easy, especially during the first weeks. You will have to manage your high blood sugar level and to have extra care in the first trimester, because this is the period when the brain, kidneys, heart and lungs form. In case your blood sugar level is too high, the baby could have birth defects. Sadly the majority of women find out that they are pregnant 5-6 weeks after conception.

If you would like to get pregnant you will have to take extra care of yourself because of pregnancy and diabetes, including having blood tests and taking different supplements.

Having diabetes while being pregnant

Women with diabetes have equal chances of having a healthy baby as healthy women. Nonetheless if they don’t take into consideration diabetes while being pregnant, they might have complications including miscarriage and stillbirth, the baby has higher chances of having birth defects, like heart defects or neural tube defects and also the baby could be very large before birth. This way delivery is more difficult.

Women who are facing pregnancy and diabetes have to think about a lot more things than women who are healthy.