The professionals involved in the treatment of your gestational diabetes have important parts to play in the management of your condition.
When you receive a diagnosis of gestational diabetes, it means that it is during this pregnancy when diabetes has occurred. It is an indication that the levels of your blood glucose are excessively high and this can be a risk for your baby as well as you. The main aim of treatment for gestational diabetes is to get your blood glucose levels to stay constantly within the normal range. This can be achieved with keeping your weight under control, exercising, going on a diet plan, perhaps the use of insulin, and monitoring your blood glucose levels frequently.
The aim of treating gestational diabetes is to regularly monitor your levels of blood glucose so that changes in your meals can be done in order to get your blood glucose levels back to normal quickly. If there is a necessity to use insulin, its amount has to be changed too. So, there is much you need to understand and monitor.
The Treatment Team for Gestational Diabetes
The best possible gestational diabetes treatment team should comprise of an endocrinologist, an obstetrician as well as a dietitian and a registered nurse who are both also diabetes educators. If you need to use insulin, an endocrinologist is necessary as this medical professional can help with adjustments of insulin.
- Diabetes educators.
Diabetes educators are people whose specialties lie in their capability to teach pregnant women gestational diabetes management. They are important because treatment of gestational diabetes is mostly self-management. A diabetes educator will help you with the monitoring of your blood glucose, use of medications and adding exercise to your every day activity so that you can have overall health and fitness during your pregnancy.
- Dietitians.
They are experts whom you depend upon for information on nutrition and how the various types of foods can affect gestational diabetes. You can depend upon your dietitian to achieve a nutritious meal plan which contains suitable kinds of food, the proper amount of these foods and how often you should eat.
- Your obstetrician.
An essential part of the treatment of your gestational diabetes is prenatal care. A most common gestational diabetes complication is the excessive growth of the baby due to the surplus amount of glucose in the body. When the baby is too big, normal delivery will not be possible. To avoid this complication, your obstetrician employs fetal monitoring and the ultrasound to constantly observe the size of your baby so that your baby and you will get the safest possible delivery.
- Your endocrinologist.
Gestational diabetes is a disease linked to hormones and since an endocrinologist specializes in the improper functioning of glands that produce hormones, he or she is the doctor you need the most. The endocrinologist is the doctor you look to for advice on glucose and insulin management.
- The other members of the healthcare team.
The nurses who work together with your family doctor, who will look after your overall health, are also important to you. Your family doctor and nurses know your medical background. So, they will go on evaluating your health while the gestational diabetes specialists are assisting you to manage your gestational diabetes.
- Your family and your spouse.
Understanding Diabetes – Working with your Health Care Team – Video Guide
Plenty of emotional support is needed for pregnant women who have gestational diabetes. In such a situation, it helps to have the friends, family members and spouse give assistance, attention and concern as it can be tough with so much monitoring to carry out and plenty to learn. You really need the support from all of them.
Treatment of gestational diabetes involves the medical professionals and the patient. The medical professions assist the patient who turns up at the clinic at least once in three weeks during her pregnancy. The patient must know how to look after herself and know when she ought to request for assistance from the gestational diabetes team.
The patient has to be aware that although gestational diabetes usually ends with the delivery of the baby, the patient faces a future with the chance of getting gestational diabetes again in another pregnancy and type 2 diabetes. As such, after the delivery of the baby, the patient ought to continue exercising and using the healthy diet that she has learned.
Self-management is of utmost importance in the management of gestational diabetes. This indicates the important role you play in your gestational diabetes treatment team.