Strollerderby : gestational diabetes

They Say: Gestational Diabetes Makes For Late Talkers

Kate Tuttle — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:29:00 GMT

A new study out of Canada suggests that children whose mothers were diagnosed with gestational diabetes when they were in utero are twice as likely to have language delays in childhood. The researchers, led by Ginette Dionne, a psychology professor at Laval University in Quebec, compared 221 children born to diabetic mothers with 2,612 whose mothers were not diabetic during pregnancy; while 13% of the children in the control group evinced some language delay, 26% of the diabetic mothers' children did. The study controlled for such factors as smoking, birth weight, and maternal age and educational level.

What does this give us, besides another reason for women who get gestational diabetes to feel guilty? Dr. Dionne says she hopes that further studies could demonstrate the benefits of early language intervention for such children, to help close the gap.

How Big Is Baby? Soooo Big!

Amy Kuras — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:02:00 GMT

Soon-to-deliver mothers, look away. I'm serious. You don’t want to read this.

A mother in Guam gave birth this week to likely the biggest baby ever born in there, and probably the second or third biggest in recent memory in the world, anywhere.
How big was this ginormous child? FOURTEEN POUNDS. Four. Teen. And five ounces. Twice the size of the average baby, or about the size of a six-month old, people. It quite frankly makes the lady business twinge a little to just look at that picture over there.

Mother Janice Perez is diabetic, which can lead to a giant-sized baby if the condition is not well managed. It's also her eighth baby, but none of her other kids were bigger than nine pounds at birth. Amazing that giving birth to a record-setter can make nine pounds seem kinda small, but there it is.

Not-so-little Jayvin Jon is on oxygen, but otherwise doing really well. Perez says that he doesn't like being in the incubator because he doesn’t fit, and that he clearly likes to eat.

As for me? I'm days away from giving birth to number two and I really wish I had just not read this. But Janice Perez (who had a c-section and still doctors had a hard time getting him out) has my admiration for getting through a pregnancy, much less a birth, with a baby that big.

14.5 Pound Baby: Large Babies Don't Always Rule

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 01:13:00 GMT

They call him Super Baby Tonio and he was born weighing 14.5 pounds in Cancun Mexico. Apparently, crowds are visiting the nursery to take a look at the big babe who consumes more than an average amount of milk and is obviously larger than your average kid. Doctors report that the little boy shows signs of higher than normal blood sugar but is otherwise 'normal.'

Large babies are becoming more common and it is not a good sign. Gestational diabetes (an excess of maternal blood sugar during pregnancy) is one of the primary causes of overly large babies, and can lead to other complications including miscarriage and birth defects.

Women at risk for gestational diabetes are those 20% or more over their ideal body weight, women with history of large babies (over 9 pounds), being a member of a high-risk ethnic group, or intolerance for glucose during a standard prenatal test. Large babies like Super Baby Tonio may be newsworthy, but they aren't necessarily hale and hearty.