Gestational Diabetes at 30 Weeks Pregnant

Gestational diabetes is a type of diabetes that only occurs during pregnancy, as the name implies. It’s often diagnosed late in pregnancy, typically after 24^th week pregnant. The good news, most pregnant women with the condition can successfully deliver healthy babies. If you’re diagnosed with gestational diabetes at 30 weeks pregnant, here are pieces of helpful information to remember.

What to expect at 30 weeks pregnant?

Third trimester starts from week 28 of pregnancy and lasts to giving birth (typically around 40^th week of pregnancy). At 30 weeks pregnant, your baby continues to be more active and therefore you can feel lots of your baby movements each day.

You may be aware of many movements. There is no set number of these movements since it can vary from woman to woman, every pregnancy is unique. Just make sure you know the pattern of your baby movements! If this pattern changes, tell your doctor!

This week is also the time of when the receptors of your baby will be completely developed. The baby’s brain is also getting bigger.

Another significant change, the bone marrow of your baby usually has taken over production of red blood cells. This is very important step since it means the baby is better able to thrive on her /his own once born. And at 31 weeks pregnant, the baby will start to get signals from all five senses, more sensitive to what you eat, listen to the sound of your voice, perceive dark and light.

As the baby continuously grows and develops at 30^th week of pregnancy, you may also experience some discomforts associated with these changes, these include:

1. Feeling of breathless. This discomfort can occur due to you have extra pounds of weight to carry around and your bump put more pressure to your lungs.
2. At 29-32 weeks of pregnancy, night leg cramps are also common symptom. This can cause difficulty sleeping since you may not get your comfortable at night. Lifestyle measures such as lying curled up on side with a cushion under bump and a bolster /pillow between legs may help.
3. As baby get bigger in size, this puts more pressure on your urinary system too. As a result, you experience frequent urination or an urge to pass more urine.
4. Other discomforts such as fatigue, heartburn, and backache.

What is gestational diabetes?

As mentioned earlier, it refers to diabetes that is only found and diagnosed during pregnancy. It is quite common condition – about 18 in every 100 pregnant women giving birth in Wales and England may be affected, according to NHS. And according to University of California San Francisco medical center, it affects about 7 % of all pregnancies. The bad news, it seems that the number of cases is growing.

Causes and symptoms

The answer of why some pregnant women develop gestational diabetes is not fully known. But the raised pregnancy hormones, especially in late pregnancy are often to blame.

In gestational diabetes, high levels of pregnancy hormones stimulated by placenta impair the action of insulin (hormone released by pancreas that is responsible for blood sugar control). As a result, blood sugar is easier to rise! And the placenta will make and release more insulin-blocking hormones as the baby grows.

There is usually no early symptom. Therefore, screening for gestational diabetes is usually a part of your prenatal care, especially true if you’re at high risk of developing the condition. If you do have the condition, you can experience discomfort symptoms of high blood sugar such as:

1. Blurred vision.
2. Recurrent infection such as a yeast infection.
3. Increased thirst and dry mouth.
4. Tiredness and frequent urination – but these symptoms are also quite common in late pregnancy even though if you don’t have gestational diabetes.

Prognosis and outlook

Although it is a temporary condition, it can increase your risk of type-2 diabetes (the most common form of diabetes mellitus). Therefore after pregnancy, it’s not bad idea to always stay with a healthy-balanced diet and do other appropriate lifestyle measures such as:

1. Maintain your healthy weight!
2. Breastfeeding is recommended after delivery, at least for 6 months. It’s the perfect way to completely nourish your newborn, and also very helpful to lose your pregnancy weight.
3. Do exercise on 4-5 days a week! It’s undeniable that regular exercise can help improve your insulin sensitivity, lowering the risk of type-2 diabetes.
4. Take screening for diabetes. This test is commonly recommended 3-6 weeks after giving birth to ensure that gestational diabetes has gone. Your doctor may also ask you to take a routine screening every 1-2 years.

Gestational diabetes at 30 weeks pregnant

It’s not uncommon to find gestational diabetes diagnosed at 30 weeks pregnant since again it usually occurs late in pregnancy. It’s commonly recommended to start taking screening test between weeks 24 to 28. But if you are at high risk of developing the condition, your doctor may ask you to take the screening earlier.

There are some treatments, but in fact gestational diabetes doesn’t go away during pregnancy. The best thing you can do is to control it as well over the course of your pregnancy.

And if you lose control on it, you’re at high risk of developing the following pregnancy complications:

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1. The risk of delivering newborn with overweight (9 pounds or more). High amounts of glucose in the circulation can cross the placenta, triggering the baby’s pancreas to produce more extra insulin. As a result, the baby can gain more pounds of weight and grow too large.
2. Premature birth. Poorly-controlled gestational diabetes may make you give birth too early. Or if the baby has become too large, your doctor may also ask you to choose early delivery.
3. The risk of having baby with respiratory distress syndrome, difficulty breathing problem. It is likely to occur in baby with premature birth. The risk of mothers with gestational diabetes to have babies with respiratory distress syndrome is still pretty high even though if they give birth normally (not premature).
4. Babies may also have a hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) shortly after birth due to the high amount of insulin produced by their own pancreas during pregnancy.

Do’s and don’ts for gestational diabetes

Gestational diabetes is not the end of everything. With careful monitoring and treatment, you can still have a safe & healthy pregnancy.

What to do

The following are some key points of what to do to cope with the condition:

1. Do eat carbohydrates, but it’s much better to chose healthy ones. No matter with or without gestational diabetes, your body always needs glucose. It is the main fuel of where your energy coming from. Just make sure to eat a wide variety of complex carbohydrates, typically high in fiber and with low GI (glycemix index) such as whole grain, sweet potatoes, and brown rice (whole grain rice). See also good and bad foods for your blood sugar in this section!
2. Do eat everything in balance! Even healthy foods also have calories. So make everything fit into your daily calories! If necessary, see a registered dietitian for more assistance.
3. Being pregnant doesn’t mean you can forget your exercise. Even regular exercise is very important for your pregnancy, especially true if you also have gestational diabetes. It can help improve your overall health, keep your weight under control, and good for glucose metabolism.
4. Do keep monitoring your blood sugar levels! Your doctor usually ask you to check it at certain times, typically after fasting (in the morning, before eating anything) and 1-2 hours after meal. If you take insulin, you may also need to check it at bedtime and before exercise. See more the normal blood sugar targets for diabetics in here!
5. Sleep well! Research suggests that lack of sleep may make you more difficult to control your blood sugar. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to sleep well in the late pregnancy. If you do have difficulty sleeping, talk to your doctor!

In many cases, lifestyle measures such as eating right and exercising are helpful enough to control the condition. However sometimes diabetic medication is required. If you need medication to control your blood sugar, take it as well as prescribed!

What to avoid

And here are some checklists of foods to restrict and avoid:

1. Avoid foods that are easy to cause a spike in blood sugar such as sugar-sweetened drinks, too sweet tea, or any drinks added sugar.
2. Bad source for protein such as pork bacon, fried meats, ribs, poultry skin, deep-fried tofu, and deep-fried fish.
3. Bad source for carbohydrate (simple carbohydrate) such as any processed grains (white flour or white rice), cereals high in sugar and low in fiber, white bread, and French fries.
4. Bad dietary fruits and veggies such as canned fruit, canned vegetables, fruit punch, sweetened applesauce, – and veggies cooked /added with lots of cheese, sugar, sauce, or butter!
5. Bad dairy products such as regular sour cream, regular yogurt, regular ice cream, and whole milk. It’s more recommended to choose low-fat dairy products such as low-fat yogurt, skim milk, and low-fat sour cream.
6. Bad dietary fats such as any foods high in saturated fats or/and artificial trans-fat! To keep safe – make sure that most of your dietary fats is loaded with healthy fats, unsaturated fats such as nuts, avocados, fatty fish (like salmon and tuna), and plant-based oils (like olive and canola oils).

What else

It’s normal to gain weight during pregnancy. But it’s also important that your pregnancy weight gain doesn’t go too far. If you had BMI (body mass index) greater than 27 before pregnancy, your doctor may ask you to lower the amount of calories in your diet – talk with your doctor for more assistance!

You may also need to take extra prenatal appointments to make sure that it is always controlled as well over the course of the pregnancy. This is important to prevent the complications of the disease.

Normally, the chance to start labor is usually offered after 38 weeks pregnant. But if your baby is large for its age, or if there is something goes awry on ultrasound scans, or if you have particular problem in your pregnancy – your doctor may recommend taking early birth.