Pregnancy diabetes symptoms are something that you should be aware of. But here’s the thing…most of the time, there are no symptoms. That’s why all women are tested somewhere between 24 and 28 weeks of gestation. Pregnancy diabetes symptoms can include any or all of the following symptoms: excessive thirst, frequent urination, frequent infections (yeast, bladder, or skin), sugar in the urine, blurred vision, nausea, and fatigue. As if being pregnant didn’t make you fatigued enough.
Since gestational diabetes is most similar to type 2 diabetes, the symptoms are similar as well. Both gestational diabetes and type 2 diabetes result from insulin resistance. When your cells are resistant to insulin, it takes higher amounts of insulin to get the sugar from the blood and into the cell.
Pregnancy Diabetes Symptoms
Excessive Thirst: High blood sugar levels make the kidneys work harder to remove all the extra sugar from the blood. In order to do this, they need to make more urine. The kidneys will pull the water from your body, which causes you to feel dehydrated. And you feel thirsty.
Frequent Urination: This make sense. If your kidneys are producing more urine and you’re drinking more, you’re going to pee more.
Infections: Infections are caused by an overgrowth of bacteria. Bacteria eat sugar, so when there’s a lot of sugar either in the blood or urine, they thrive. Kinda like a kid in a candy store!
Blurred Vision: Blurry vision is caused from high blood sugar levels. High sugar levels cause the lens of the eye to swell, which makes things look fuzzy. Fortunately, when blood sugars return to normal, vision usually improves too.
Fatigue: Cells get their energy from the sugar in your blood. If the sugar isn’t getting into your cells because it’s staying in your blood, the cells don’t get their energy. Which means you don’t have energy either.
Nausea: This feeling is from the ketones your body produces when it can’t use sugar for energy. If sugar isn’t available, the body uses fat for energy instead.
The pregnancy diabetes symptoms mentioned above are not meant to be an exhaustive list, but they include the most common ones. If you’re pregnant and suspect that you have diabetes, call your healthcare provider immediately. You’ll most likely be scheduled for a glucose tolerance test to get a diabetes or gestational diabetes diagnosis. If you’re diagnoses with gestational diabetes, keeping track of what you eat and your blood sugar in a gestational diabetes food and blood sugar log will be incredibly helpful for you. I’ve put one together that you’re more than welcome to use. Even if you don’t use this one, make sure to keep good records in whatever system you choose to use.
