Type 1 Diabetes & Trying to Have a Baby

Planning a pregnancy is an exciting time, but is also filled with questions, doubts and fears. If you are a woman with type 1 diabetes, you have special health factors and precautions to take into account as you try to get pregnant. Besides your health care providers, involve your significant other in planning for a healthy baby.

Talk to Your Doctor

• Pregnancy brings extra stress to a woman's body as her hormones change and the baby starts to develop. If you are planning to become pregnant and have type 1 diabetes, you have more health factors and special needs to account for both during and before your pregnancy than a non-diabetic woman. The better your glucose control is in the months leading up to your pregnancy, the likelier it is that you will be able to avoid complications for yourself and your baby.

  Advise your doctor or endocrinologist, if you see one regularly, that you are planning on having a baby. She will want to prescribe extra tests for you, such as thyroid and kidney function test to make sure that neither of these is compromised. He also will send you for cardiovascular screening and to an ophthalmologist for a complete eye exam.

  Pregnant women with diabetes who have already suffered diabetic retinopathy (nerve damage to the retina) are at higher risk for this condition to worsen during pregnancy. For this reason the American Diabetes Association (ADA) not only recommends a dilated eye-exam before getting pregnant, but another exam during the first trimester and after birth.

A Healthy Body for a Healthy Baby

• Your doctor also should also know that you are planning to become pregnant because he may wish to change other oral medications that you are taking besides your insulin, such as medications to control high blood pressure. Your insulin needs will fluctuate during the different trimesters of pregnancy as hormones make your body become insulin resistant.

  During your pregnancy, your doctor will ask you monitor your blood glucose control more closely than before. High levels of glucose are unhealthy for your unborn baby, even in the very early stages of pregnancy because the baby's organs are formed during the first trimester. In all stages of pregnancy, high glucose levels will negatively impact the baby's development and growth.
  By closely cooperating with your health care team, you can have a healthy pregnancy and birth. Enlist the help of those closest to you, be it your significant other, family or friends. They should know how they can help you to prepare your body for pregnancy by helping you to make healthy food and exercise choices.

  If you are already in the stage when you are trying to become pregnant and it is not happening as quickly as you had hoped, keep striving for the sugar levels the doctor prescribed for you. Do not allow the frustration of not getting pregnant as soon as you had hoped undo the good you have worked for in preparing for a healthy baby. You may find it helpful to join a type 1 diabetes support group or forum, to exchange experiences with other women in a similar situation. All that preparation will pay off when you hold your baby in your arms.