Insulin Treatment for Gestational Diabetes.

For some pregnant women, exercise and diet can be sufficient for the management of gestational diabetes while others find that these lifestyle changes are insufficient. About 15 percent of pregnant women having gestational diabetes will need insulin to send their blood sugar levels to the normal, safe range. If your level of activity and your diet have been changed without being able to lower your blood glucose level, you may need to be prescribed insulin.

Gestational Diabetes: Self-Care with Insulin

You will have to learn how to use a syringe to inject insulin into your bloodstream since it needs to be done every day. Either a diabetes educator or your doctor can teach you how the injection can be performed by yourself. When insulin is injected:

• Always use the same area to inject insulin into the bloodstream. How fast or slow insulin enters your bloodstream depends upon the place you select to inject your insulin, clarifies the American Diabetes Association (ADA). By having the injections always at the same location, insulin will take almost the same time to enter the bloodstream.

• However, different spots should be used within that location. The ADA warns that side effects such as hard or fatty lumps which may affect the effectiveness of your insulin can occur the exact spot is used too many times.

• Careful monitoring of your blood glucose levels is necessary to ascertain that your insulin dosage and timing are correct.

• Get to know the number of shots you require. Most diabetics require a couple of insulin injections each day. Your doctor can advice you with the help of the records you have made on your blood glucose levels.

Gestational Diabetes — University Hospital PSA – Video Guide

Gestational Diabetes: Prenatal Care with Insulin

If you need insulin, it is an indication that your gestational diabetes is serious enough to give your obstetrician twice-weekly or weekly visits so that a number of tests can be made to ensure that there is nothing else wrong with your pregnancy. Such tests will not harm your fetus and can be:

• Non-stress test:

Frequently, such a test is done on pregnant women who are on insulin. The fetus’s heartbeat is measured before as well as after movements. If the fetus is developing healthily and normally, the heartbeat ought to be lower while resting and higher after some movements.

• Ultrasound:

Ultrasound tests, which make use of sound waves to achieve pictures, should be known to pregnant women for doctors use them to watch pictures of the fetus to know the fetus’s muscle tone, size and shape as the fetus develops.

• Kick counts:

This involves tracking the movement of the baby each day by the mother so that the doctor can be informed should the baby moves very much less or more on any particular day.

• Biophysical profile:

With both the ultrasound and the non-stress test combined, your doctor gets a better picture of your baby’s heart rate, amount of amniotic fluid, and development.

You baby will not be harmed by the insulin injected into your bloodstream as insulin will not enter your fetus’s bloodstream even though extra blood sugar will.

Gestational Diabetes: Postnatal Care

A day after the delivery of your baby, the doctor ought to test your blood sugar levels. This blood test will be repeated in 2 to 4 months’ time to find out if the blood sugar levels are back to normal. Many women can stop insulin treatment after delivery of their babies.