Water birth with gestational diabetes?

[flyingbeet]

As the title says, do you think it's possible to be allowed a water birth if you have gestational diabetes? My gestational diabetes is controlled well with diet so far. Ideally I would love to be in a birth centre but I feel like that would be pushing it and I would get a hard no 🥲

If it is indeed well controlled, then you can only ask. I don't think they'll say yes to a birthing centre (unless it's attached to a hospital). Does your local maternity ward have water birth facilities?

I had GD with dd4. She was born with breathing problems and was in NICU for a while. It's just something to bear in mind that babies of mothers with GD are more likely to have breathing difficulties when born.

I had GD with both my pregnancies. Unfortunately I don't think they'll let you give birth in a birth centre (unless attached to hospital as a pp mentioned). It's not so much about how controlled your diabetes is during the pregnancy. Your sugar levels can go a little haywire during labour so they need to keep a close eye on you and the baby during this time. Plus they need to keep an even closer eye on you if you have any interventions to bring on labour and during. With both mine, I was induced and then on epidural. They monitored my sugars every hour because that's how quickly they could change.

I had GD managed by diet. But I think it depends on the trust, it’s worth asking - but just expect you might not get the answer you want. In my trust you can only get into the ‘oasis suite’ (waterbirths etc) if you are low risk, and GD rules that out unfortunately. Also your levels can go a bit haywire during labour and you’ll need to be closely monitored, and they might not be able to do that as efficiently in a birthing pool.

Also a lot of trusts will not want you to go overdue with GD, so that also might impact the decision.

I managed to get my GD fully diet controlled and was still given a hard no to water birth. As I recall, due to need to monitor and perhaps correct blood sugars during the birth, which needs a drip, though it’s all a bit hazy now tbh.

However, and more importantly to me, I was able to argue against early induction at 38 weeks due to being diet controlled (irrelevant in the end as she turned up at 36+6)

There was also no issue with being mobile during the birth