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Diabetes Month

November is National Diabetes Month, a time when communities across the country team up to bring attention to diabetes and its impact on millions of Americans.

National Diabetes Month

Promoting Health After Gestational Diabetes

This year’s National Diabetes Month is focused on promoting health after gestational diabetes. Gestational diabetes is a type of diabetes that develops during pregnancy. Mothers who’ve had gestational diabetes need to know that they and their children have an increased lifelong risk for developing type 2 diabetes.

Most of the time, gestational diabetes goes away after the baby is born. Even if the diabetes goes away, you have a greater chance of getting diabetes — and your child from that pregnancy is at future risk for obesity and type 2 diabetes. In fact, half of all women who had gestational diabetes go on to develop type 2 diabetes.1

If you’ve had gestational diabetes—

  1. Get tested for type 2 diabetes within 12 weeks after your baby is born. If the test is normal, get tested every 3 years.
  2. Talk to your doctor if you plan to become pregnant again in the future.
  3. Tell your child’s doctor if you had gestational diabetes.
  4. Keep up healthy habits for a lifetime to prevent or delay type 2 diabetes.

Learn more about gestational diabetes and preventing type 2 diabetes.

Reference: Gestational diabetes. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.

https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/basics/gestational.html . Updated July 25, 2017. Accessed August 28, 2018.