If blood sugar level in the pregnant mother goes uncontrolled, the chances of the baby developing health complications become more.
According to doctors, diabetic mother’s baby will be born abnormally large in size with low sugar level and congenital malformations in heart, urinary system, pancreas and kidneys.
Health experts said lifestyle disorder, bad dietary habits, genetic factor and lack of early detection of diabetes in pregnant women are the risk factors. According to the health experts, 15 per cent of women are diagnosed with pre-extising diabetes and 10 per cent women with gestational diabetes. A patient develops gestational diabetes during the time of pregnancy.
Dr Ritesh Gupta, Endocrinologist at Fortis C-DOC Hospital, said, “The early screening of diabetes in the pregnant women is very important as the high sugar level can create major health problem to the baby.” Diabetic pregnancy has high risks that include miscarriages; large babies with high maternal blood glucose level may increase the chances to have large babies and disorders in endocrine glands, said Dr Gupta.
Recently, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has called diabetes as a growing epidemic in India with over 60 million people suffering from diabetes.
Informing about the one such patient who was diagnosed with diabetes during her pregnancy, Dr Alka Sinha, Gynaecologist and Obstetrician at BlK Speciality Hospital said, “The baby of this patient was born large in size and weight from the normal figures, his blood became thick for which we did blood transfusion. Also, the baby developed some kind of malformation in the heart too. For around 10 days, the baby was under continuous observation and kept in nursery.” The some cases the severe complication can lead to Intra Uterine Death of a baby, Dr Sinha added.
Dr Archana Dhawan Bajaj, Gynaecologist and Obstetrician at Nurture IVF Centre, said in diabetic pregnancy proper intake of food, exercise, lifestyle change, regular monitoring of glucose level, timely intake of medicines and control pressure-cholesterol should be followed by patient.