Diabetes Is Seen as a Rising Risk in Mothers-to-Be

New York Times ^ | February 18, 2006 | N. R. KLEINFIELD

[68skylark]

It has long been something of a quirk in the grim universe of diabetes: a small number of pregnant women would become temporarily diabetic. With proper care, the consequences were often thought to be mild. The babies were usually healthy. And the condition would vanish after the delivery, like a cough or a headache.

But, not unlike the wider expansion of diabetes, this disorder is now growing, and indications are that it is growing fast. In New York, so-called gestational diabetes has risen by nearly 50 percent in about 10 years.

There is also broader recognition that in the lives of many pregnant women, the arrival of the condition is significant and its impact can be grave: not only does it identify those women at particularly high risk to develop permanent diabetes, but it may contribute to their babies' eventually getting diabetes as well.

Health care officials worry that insufficient attention is being paid to the rising number of cases, apparently being propelled by genetically susceptible women entering pregnancy too fat. The inattention, the officials say, is allowing young mothers to be saddled with a harrowing lifelong disease and increasing the risk to their children of ultimately sharing that troubling destiny. It is hard to say just how alarming this will become. But those who study the diabetes epidemic are concerned that it's one more time bomb.

"It's really disturbing to us that women come into their pregnancies obese and then leave them even more obese," said Barbara Hackley, a certified nurse-midwife at the health center of the Children's Health Fund and Montefiore Medical Center in the South Bronx. "I've seen weight gains during pregnancies of 50 to 60 pounds. We've had 11- and 12-pound babies that are very dangerous to deliver."

[68skylark]

The New York Times has been doing great reporting on this topic.

[twigs]

Interesting. This IS a problem, but it's not new. I'm always suspicious of the NYT and their movitations. Is this just another new front on obesity and, the horrors of it all, having live children? It doesn't just affect obese women, either. The last time I read about it, Thomas Jefferson's wife was suspected of having it and it eventually killed her.

[Calm_Cool_and_Elected]

Interesting. I had gestational diabetes with both of my pregnancies and I was not overweight going into either. I gained the pregnancy weight that my doctor wanted me to gain and my children were 8 lbs 4 oz and 7 lbs 13 oz at birth.

CC&E

[Nathan Zachary]

Diabetes and obesity are directly related. Diabetes rises directly along with @ss width. People eat way too much sugars and fats. The pancreas just can't keep up, plus poor diet makes the pancreas sick, and unable to produce enough insulin.

You can be fat, but at least eat foods that aren't so hard to break down. sugar has got to be the worst thing ever invented.

[raybbr]

It really pissed me off when my wife's OB-GYN groups doctors all said, "She's ok. She needs to gain the weight she needs" during her pregnancies. Each time my wife put on about 50 to 60 pounds and not one of them had the guts to tell her to stop eating so much. She had pre-eclampsia for the first one. Luckily our second came righ on time and was a fast delivery (4 hours).

[conservative cat]

My sister in law had GD and was not obese before, during, or after pregnancy. I have a tendency to pack on the pounds the last two months (mostly water retention- my weight is great the whole time and then starts to spike) and have always had great blood sugar.