Gestational diabetes
Gestational diabetes is a type of diabetes that happens during pregnancy. It means that the body has trouble managing sugar (glucose). Having too much sugar in your blood can affect you and your baby.
Most women with gestational diabetes have healthy pregnancies. Changes to diet, exercise, or taking medicine can help keep blood sugar levels under control. However, gestational diabetes can sometimes cause problems like high blood pressure (pre-eclampsia), your baby growing too big or too small or may be born early. In rare cases, it can cause the baby to die before or during birth. That’s why it’s important to find and treat gestational diabetes early. Also, you have more chances to get gestational diabetes in the next pregnancy and diabetes type 2 in the future.
Some women are more likely to get diabetes during pregnancy. At your first appointment, your midwife will ask questions to see if you are at risk. If you are, you’ll be offered a test between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy. If you had gestational diabetes before, you should be tested earlier, before 24 weeks, and again at 24-28 weeks, if the first test is normal.
You are more likely to get gestational diabetes if you have one or more of these risk factors
- You have had gestational diabetes before
- You have had a large baby before (4.5 kg/10 pounds or more)
- You have a BMI above 30 kg/m2
- You have a parent, brother or sister with diabetes
- Your ethnic background - South Asian, African, Caribbean or Middle Eastern. (It is still not clear why these ethnicities are linked to a higher risk of having diabetes in pregnancy).
- You are over 40 years of age
If you are planning to have a baby or you are pregnant and have ticked one or more risk factors:
- Talk to your midwife or GP about it at your first appointment
- Check that you’re being offered tests at the right time
- Check when your test results will be available
- Check that your results are ready and they are explained to you. Make sure you understand what they mean.
- If you have a positive test, discuss what this means with your midwife or doctor, who should talk to you about what happens next
This short film about gestational diabetes was produced for Our Chance, a campaign by the charities Sands and Best Beginnings to raise awareness of health issues in pregnancy
More information
The care you should receive from the NHS is described by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists have produced information on gestational diabetes
The charity Diabetes UK has a lot of information about gestational diabetes that covers symptoms and complications, testing and treatment and the care you should expect to get
Page last updated April 2025