Rest assured, that unless you are drinking gallons of cordial or softdrink, it will not (alone) cause you to become gestational diabetic!
As far as I know, gestational diabetes is caused by conflicting hormones. The placenta releases a hormone that inhibits insulin - which can cause increased blood sugars.
If you have a family history of diabetes, are overweight, previously gestational diabetic etc you have an increased risk of being a gestational diabetic. It also increases your lifetime risk of being a diabetic.
It tends to develop after 20 weeks of pregnancy and a glucose tolerance test is now a fairly routine blood test taken at around 28 weeks gestation. It can start earlier in pregnancy, and I am suffering this phenomenon!!
The symptoms of gestational diabetes are similar to those of "normal" diabetes - they include extreme tiredness, excessive thirst, increased need to pass urine etc. These are just a few of the common ones. A doctor can also test urine for traces of glucose also when they do their usual urine tests each antenatal visit.
Please contact your health care provider for a more comprehensive run down and if you have any more general questions (that I know about!), I am happy to answer them.
Just for information's sake, I wasn't detected to be gestational diabetic until around 29 weeks with my first pregnancy, I was testing myself from early pregnancy with #2 and was diabetic from 14 weeks with him, and diabetic from very early pregnancy this time round, but I was still a tad glucose intolerant from my last pregnancy (which means that my levels were on the higher side of normal, but not fully classified as diabetic).
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