How Gestational Diabetes Can Affect Your Baby

You may have heard a little bit about gestational diabetes, but you may not fully understand how it can affect your baby.

By having blood sugar levels, or blood glucose levels, that are too high throughout your pregnancy could lead to some of these complications:

Jaundice - This is a common complication that can occur when your baby is around 5-7 days old. The baby's skin becomes yellowish due to their liver not being strong enough to break up bilirubin. While it is a health issue, it is not usually serious.

Death Or Stillborn - Gestational diabetes, left unchecked, greatly increases the risks of death or stillbirth in new babies.

Hypoglycemia - In some cases, mothers who have untreated gestational diabetes, will find their babies developing low blood sugar after they are born. Why? The baby has been used to getting great amounts of blood sugar from their mother. Suddenly, they are cut off from that, but their own insulin production to fight off the blood sugar is still very high. It may take some time to even things out.

Macrosmia - This condition is where the baby has grown too large due to gestational diabetes. The high blood sugar produced by the mother has went into the baby's blood stream. So, the baby has produced extra insulin in order to deal with the increased glucose levels, and it causes them to grow much larger.

Shoulder Dsytocia - While this is rare, it happens due to untreated gestational diabetes. The baby has grown so big that its shoulders are unable to come out of the birth canal. This is an extremely serious condition.

These are a few of the possible complications from gestational diabetes. For the mother, you'll also have the increased risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes as the years go by. You are also more likely to develop gestational diabetes in future pregnancies.

You may have heard a little bit about gestational diabetes, but you may not fully understand how it can affect your baby.

Alien writes for Diabetes diet . He also writes for Diabetes care and Diabetes

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