Diabetes and pregnancy care

Women with diabetes should be empowered to have a positive experience of pregnancy and childbirth. Providing the right information, advice and support reduces the risk of complications to mother and baby.

Use the following resources and tools to improve care for women with diabetes before, during and after pregnancy.

Shared practice examples

• PROCEED - preconception care for diabetes in Derbyshire, The Health Foundation website (July 2013)

Resources

• Diabetes in pregnancy tools and resources, National Institute for Health and Care Excellence website

• National diabetes in pregnancy audit, Health and Social Care Information Centre website

• Information Prescriptions are personalised pieces of information that give women with diabetes the information they need before they even think about having a baby

• The Planning for Pregnancy tool created by Tommy’s – a charity dedicated to making pregnancy safer-will help tell women with diabetes what they need to know about how to improve the health of your future pregnancy and child

• Statistics published by MBRRACE-UK in 2019 show Black women are five times more likely to die in pregnancy, childbirth or in the six-week postpartum period compared with white women. And the risk for Asian women is twice as high. Use this five-step guide produced by the Royal College of Gynaecologists (RCOG) and Five X More to help eradicate maternal health disparities in the UK.

E-learning

• Women with diabetes, Queens University Belfast website (free)

• Free online resource by Morrow Communications for women with gestational diabetes in four languages; English, Urdu, Somali and Arabic.

• 10-week online course aiming to provide students with a thorough understanding of all aspects of diabetes in pregnancy from Cardiff University

• Educational video series: type 1 diabetes and continuous glucose monitoring in pregnancy