Why is it important to get tested for Gestational Diabetes?

Now, you haven't actually got a disease, but the reason we are looking at that is twofold, primarily for the baby. Now, the baby has perfect diabetes control, but is having to to deal with the mom's blood glucose and can produce more insulin than it needs and can cause it to get quite big. And that has effects on the baby coming out. So ideally you would have a normal vaginal delivery rather than a caesarean section, but you might end up having a caesarean section because the baby can't come out, either its shoulder gets stuck or its head gets stuck, whatever. After it comes out, what we don't want is the baby to then end up in special care because it's got very low blood sugar. So what happens as soon as you cut the cord, your baby is no longer having to deal with your blood glucose, but it's still producing the same amount of insulin as for your blood glucose. It eventually does settle down, but having too much insulin can cause you to have very low blood glucose. And so the baby might need to have a drip. Often we get away without doing that. It does increase its risk of fits because low blood glucose can cause fits. And we want to avoid that because when you have a fit, you can have poor oxygen supply to the brain. But we also want a baby to be with mom, skin to skin contact. So we don't want baby to be away. So for that reason, we do look at making sure we get good blood glucose control. There is unfortunately an increased risk of stillbirth And also you can get neonatal jaundice as in the baby gets jaundice when it comes out. That is again, a temporary thing, but we do wish to avoid stillbirth. So that is why we do this screening test.