gestational diabetes, info please

[deaconblue]

my mum thinks the reason I feel really arsey and tearful at the moment might be too much sugar. Am 25 weeks pg and a cake per day is keeping me sane! What are the common symptoms and is tearfulness one of them?

the best way to fing out is yje glucose tolerance test. I felt fine during my pg, yet I was insulin dependant.

check it out to rule it out.

how do I get one of those? the midwife said she will do a blood test at 30 weeks as the sonographer said the baby was big at 20 weeks but that seems a while to wait.

I seem to remember being told by my diabetic nurse that GD seems to develop at around 29 weeks.

In my PCT you can phone the dept which takes the blood and book a GTT. (As you would have to starve the night before and the test takes a couple of hours to complete.)

Keep an eye on your carb intake and don't drink fruit juice, check out the GI diet books but please eat healthily.

Good luck. I hope you don't develop GD.

thank you, me too. I do have a real taste for sweet stuff and haven't made much effort to avoid it so far. Will try to keep off the cake and biscuits and see if that helps my mood too

Your GP can do a couple of tests. I had mine done today with symptoms of tiredness, thirst and weeing a lot. Nothing was said about being tearful though.

I had bloods taken today and my urine tested.

You can ask your midwife about a GTT at around 28 weeks, but they don't normally do them unless you have two or more risk factors.

If you did have GD, the first thing they would do would be to put you on a low-GI diet and see if you can control your blood sugar that way so it could be worth looking into changing your eating habits to a low-GI model anyway and see if you feel better. You need to make sure you get enough calcium (they recommend the equivalent of a pint of milk (1 oz of cheese or a small pot of yogurt is equivalent to a third of a pint of milk)) and fruit/veg, though (and also enough carbohydrate don't cut it out altogether, just switch to slower-release forms). And you can have up to 100ml of fruit juice as long as it's with a meal (not that that's very much).

Since my GD was diagnosed and I've changed my diet I do feel a lot better through the day -- with hindsight I can see that I was probably getting blood sugar peaks and troughs through the day.

That's interesting PortandLemon as none of the above was mentioned to me yesterday by my GP or the nurse today. Going to look into what you have said further. Thanks for posting.

i had this (well the sugar cravings) but had a negative gtt test last week.

I'm not sure there are any outsward symptoms of pregnancy diabetes.

I had the advantage of posting straight after my first session seeing the diabetic nurse post-diagnosis...

I didn't have any outward symptoms, either (rationalising the sugar highs and lows is strictly after the event; I wasn't aware of them at the time). I was only tested because DS was a large baby.

i had gd and manage to control it through diet. mine was picked up just after 20 week scan. added risk factor of my sister having it during her pregnancies. once i changed my diet suddenly realised i was less tired and less thirsty but it did take a while to work out what worked for me meal wise.