Gestational Diabetes Alert: Essential Blood Sugar Monitoring Tips for 'Sugar Moms

Not all pregnant women with diabetes require insulin treatment. Generally speaking, during pregnancy, the vast majority of pregnant women with pregestational diabetes and 20%-25% of gestational diabetes require medication to maintain normal blood sugar levels. In fact, most patients with gestational diabetes only experience a mild increase in blood sugar after meals. Through reasonable dietary adjustments and appropriate exercise treatment (such as walking after meals), they can control blood sugar within a satisfactory range.

For most pregnant women with diabetes, their blood sugar returns to normal after delivery and they can stop taking insulin. Therefore, most pregnant women with diabetes do not need to use insulin for life. However, pregnant women with diabetes need to realize that even if their blood sugar returns to normal, their risk of developing diabetes in the future will still be significantly higher than that of the general population - 1/3-1/4 of pregnant women with diabetes will develop diabetes in the future. Therefore, after giving birth, you should pay attention to strengthening exercise and controlling diet, improving your lifestyle, and maintaining an appropriate weight. Only by strengthening prevention regularly can we reduce the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease in the future.

What should you pay attention to when monitoring blood sugar?

During pregnancy, as the pregnancy months increase, the blood sugar of pregnant women will gradually increase. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen blood sugar monitoring and provide timely guidance and adjustment of insulin dosage. Self-monitoring of blood glucose includes fasting, 2 hours after meals, before bedtime, and nighttime blood glucose. The frequency of monitoring depends on the specific situation. Generally speaking, the greater the fluctuation in blood sugar, the more unstable the condition, and the higher the frequency of monitoring; conversely, the frequency of blood sugar monitoring can be reduced. It should be noted that due to the decreased renal glucose threshold of pregnant diabetics, urine glucose can also be positive when blood glucose is normal or only slightly elevated. Therefore, urine glucose results are difficult to accurately reflect blood glucose levels. If you only use urine glucose plus sign to increase the dosage of insulin, it will easily cause a hypoglycemic reaction. Therefore, pregnant women with diabetes must adjust their insulin dosage based on blood sugar.