Gestational Diabetes

Surprising facts about a common pregnancy complication.

On episode four, of Double Happiness Multiplied, we discuss Gestational Diabetes (GDM) and why it’s important for women carrying more than one baby to understand how it might impact their pregnancy.

The good news is, with the right exercise and nutrition program you can avoid any adverse effects of the condition. More importantly, for 95 percent of women diagnosed with GDM the condition resolves once the babies are born.

It’s a fact of life that pregnancy causes a diabetic state in every woman. About 90 percent of pregnant women can cope with it, while 10 percent can’t. It’s this latter group who get GDM.

What is Gestational Diabetes?

Diabetes Educator, Nurse Practitioner, and Midwife Marina Mickleson has spent more than twenty years explaining this to pregnant women. She says quite simply GDM is diabetes that is picked up for the first time in pregnancy.

“What this means is that the woman hasn’t had a prior diabetes diagnosis and the condition has been picked up during routine testing, which shows the woman has glucose intolerance in the pregnancy,” explains Marina.

What’s more, the percentage of women diagnosed with GDM varies depending on the population. On average, about 10 percent of the Caucasian population will get GDM, but if you add in the Indian, Asian, Indigenous, and African population, it can be up to 20 percent of the population who get GDM, according to Marina.

“These women are more at risk just because of mainly the food they’re eating,”

“Compared to what they’d be eating for three or four generations in their communities, it’s the Western diet their bodies aren’t able to cope with,” says Marina.

Unfortunately, as Marina explains women who are carrying multiples are also at a higher risk of developing GDM due to the larger placenta, and GDM has a lot to do with placental hormones. So, the more babies you’re carrying, the more placental hormones you’ll be producing, which increases the chances of developing GDM.

Testing

There are two ways to be tested for GDM:

* A fasting blood glucose test, usually done in the first 12-weeks of pregnancy for women considered at high-risk of developing GDM. If this fasting level is elevated, then you will get a positive diagnosis and further testing isn’t required.

* The two-hour glucose tolerance test – this is where after an initial blood test you drink 75 grams of glucose syrup, which is followed by two more blood tests to see how your body reacts to the glucose load. This test is ideally given at 26-to-28-weeks’ gestation, however, if there has been a GDM diagnosis in a previous pregnancy or there is a family history of Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, the test will be done at around 20-22-weeks’ gestation.

Deb Howe is an identical twin and just gave birth to identical twins. She invited us along to her Glucose Tolerance Test at 26-weeks’ gestation. Deb was considered a high-risk because her twin sister has Type 1 diabetes.

After fasting for 10-hours, Deb had her first blood test and was given a 300ml bottle of liquid to drink, which contained the 75 grams of glucose syrup.

Everything was going well until about 20-minutes after Deb consumed the sweet liquid, she started to feel a bit lightheaded, the babies were kicking a lot, and she felt a tiny bit of nausea.

Deb admits she was worried that she had developed gestational diabetes because before falling pregnant she was following a low carb high-fat diet. When she started getting morning sickness, all she craved was carbohydrate foods and she gained a lot of weight in the first trimester.

Another two blood tests later and Deb was given to all clear to go home and wait a few days for the results.

The good news is, that apart from having low iron Deb appears to have passed the GTT,