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Gestational Diabetes Testing in Louisville, Kentucky
Baptist Health Louisville: Gestational Diabetes Testing
Gestational diabetes develops during pregnancy and can affect both mother and baby. Learn more about gestational diabetes testing from Baptist Health today.
Gestational Diabetes Testing in Louisville, Kentucky HealthTalks Transcript
Cara Keller, MD, Obstetrics & Gynecology:
In pregnancy, the risk of diabetes does go up, and that’s why we screen all women for diabetes in pregnancy. The majority of women with diabetes in pregnancy will have what is called gestational diabetes, meaning that it developed during the pregnancy due to hormonal changes that happened during the period that you were pregnant.
For all women, we test for gestational diabetes between 24 and 28 weeks with a one-hour glucose challenge test. Women who have gestational and pre-gestational diabetes will undergo more extensive testing. For one, we want to watch the baby grow. Usually, we will do monthly growth ultrasounds.
Around 32 weeks, we will typically start weekly surveillance of the baby to make sure the baby is growing and doing things appropriately. Those are typically done with an ultrasound for a timeline of about 20 to 40 minutes where we watch the baby’s heart rate to make sure the baby is doing things we expect.
For women who have gestational diabetes, typically, immediately after delivery we will check a few blood sugars to make sure they’re in a reasonable range. At their six-week postpartum follow up, we recommend that everyone is screened who had diabetes in pregnancy for having diabetes outside of pregnancy. Over half the women who have gestational diabetes will go on to develop diabetes later in life. We do all this testing during pregnancy to help moms and their families have a happy and healthy pregnancy and successful delivery.
Next Steps and Useful Resources
