Who is at high risk for gestational diabetes?
The following factors increase your risk of developing gestational diabetes during pregnancy:
• Being overweight prior to becoming pregnant. Even if you are 20% or more over your ideal body weight you are at risk for gestational diabetes.
• Family history of diabetes. If your parents or siblings have diabetes.
• Your risk of developing gestational diabetes increases if you have prediabetes. It is a condition were you have slightly elevated blood sugar levels, higher than normal but not high enough to make you diabetic. Other names for it are “impaired glucose tolerance” and “impaired fasting glucose.”
• Excessive weight gain during pregnancy, particularly in the first trimester increase the risk of gestational diabetes.
• If you have had gestational diabetes during a previous pregnancy.
• Having glucose in your urine.
• If you have given birth to a baby over 9 pounds.
• If you have given birth to a stillborn baby.
• You’ve had a baby with a birth defect.
• Having too much amniotic fluid, a condition called polyhydramnios.
• You have high blood pressure.
• You’re over 35.
• Being a member of nonwhite race. Reason for this is still not clear, women who are black, Hispanic, American Indian or Asian are more likely to develop gestational diabetes.
Who is at low risk for Gestational Diabetes?
Your at low risk if you meet all of the following criteria:
• Your younger than 25.
• Your weight is in a healthy range.
• Your not a member of any racial or ethnic group with a high prevalence of diabetes, including people of Hispanic, African, Native American, South or East Asian and indigenous Australian ancestry.
• None of your close relatives have diabetes.
• You’ve never had a high result on a blood sugar test.
• You’ve never had an overly large baby or any other pregnancy complication usually associated
with gestational diabetes.
Many women who develop gestational diabetes have no known risk factors.