What I Saw on the Ward This Summer (And Why It Should Worry Every Doula)

And how to care for Newborns in hot homes

By OBC Mentors Caz Sayles & Michelle Morgan-Smith

Four weeks. Three births. All in a heatwave. Let me tell you what supporting women through labour actually looked like this summer, because it wasn’t just hot outside.

With my first client, the room temperature was 28 degrees. Not the corridor. Not the car park. The room where she was labouring. My client was hot. Her husband was hot. The midwife was hot. There was no air con, no breeze, nowhere in that room to escape it. We stepped out at one point to find other parts of the hospital, outpatients, pharmacy, A&E all sitting cool and comfortable. The contrast wasn’t subtle.

Some rooms in that building had been prioritised for climate control.

The labour room wasn’t one of them.

Then came the postnatal ward. If the labour room was uncomfortable, the postnatal ward was something closer to barbaric. Six people crammed into a small space, newborns screaming, the heat thick enough to feel solid and industrial air conditioning units running flat out, doing nothing but adding noise. Not cooling. Just loud. Red-faced, stressed midwives trying to do the most tender work there is helping new families bond, feed, recover inside what amounted to a hot box.

And in the middle of all that, I watched a midwife try to fit a woolly hat onto a newborn. Room temperature: over 30 degrees.

It’s not really about one midwife or one hat. It’s about a system running on protocols written for a version of the UK that doesn’t exist anymore, delivered by exhausted staff with no time, no training update, and no cooler room to retreat to.

This isn’t a one-off. It’s a known, documented problem.

The Royal College of Midwives has been explicit that many maternity units suffer from overheating and poor ventilation, and has been actively campaigning on the condition of maternity buildings for exactly this reason. They’ve flagged that staff working long shifts with limited access to cool rest areas or regular hydration breaks are especially vulnerable and that heat makes labour harder for the women going through it, on top of the extra demand maternity teams face during a heatwave as women come in with heat-related concerns.

Wellcome’s recent report on heat and pregnancy went further, pointing out something that should stop us in our tracks: heat is not embedded in NHS maternity care guidelines. There’s no consistent clinical guidance for hot weather in pregnancy and birth. Staff are making it up as they go, room by room, shift by shift. The same report calls for maternity units to be formally assessed for heat resilience and prioritised in NHS estate upgrades because right now, they’re not.

None of this is abstract to me anymore. I’ve stood in those rooms. I’ve watched a birth partner try to fan his wife with a hospital leaflet because there was nothing else in the room that moved air. I’ve watched a midwife who clearly cared, sweating through her uniform, still doing her job because that’s what midwives do while the building around her offered her nothing.

Why this matters for us as doulas.

We can’t fix the buildings. We can’t install air conditioning. But we can:

🥵 Prepare clients properly for the reality of a hot ward — not just “bring a fan,” but genuinely set expectations

🥵 Advocate in the room: asking for a window, a fan, an ice pack, or for outdated advice (like hats on overheating newborns) to be gently questioned

🥵 Know the evidence ourselves, so when we push back, we’re doing it from a place of information, not just gut feeling

🥵 Talk about it publicly, the way the RCM and Wellcome are because pressure on the system to change comes from all directions, including ours

This heatwave isn’t the last one. The Met Office has already confirmed record-breaking heat across the UK this year, and every serious climate projection says summers like this are the new normal, not the exception. Maternity units built for a cooler Britain are not going to adapt on their own. Someone has to keep saying it out loud.

So I will. And I’d encourage every doula reading this to do the same in your training, in your client conversations, and every time you’re stood in a 30-degree room watching someone try to put a woolly hat on a baby.

• Caz

Newborns in Hot Homes

Everyone is talking about sun cream and paddling pools right now. Fewer people are talking about the family in a second-floor flat with no through-draught, a baby who won't settle, and a temperature gauge that hasn't dropped below 28°C since Tuesday.

That's the reality for a lot of the families we work with. Heat advice is often written as though everyone has a garden, a fan in every room, and windows that open on both sides of the house. Most people don't. So let's talk about what actually matters when your newborn is trying to sleep, feed, and regulate a body that can't yet sweat efficiently, in a home that won't cool down.

Newborns aren't just small adults in the heat

A baby's ability to regulate temperature is genuinely different to yours. They can't sweat as effectively, they can't tell you they're too hot, and heat exhaustion and heatstroke escalate faster in infants than in older children or adults. That's not a reason to panic — it's a reason to know the actual signs and act on them rather than guessing.

Watch for a baby who is unusually sleepy or floppy, sweating heavily, breathing fast, or feeding less than usual. A baby who feels hot to the touch but isn't sweating, or who seems unwell even after 30 minutes of active cooling, needs medical help — call 111, or 999 if they seem seriously unwell.

What actually helps in a home that won't cool down

• Undress before you fan. A nappy alone is enough overnight in real heat. Layers and swaddles are for winter guidance, not this high heat.

• Fans move air, they don't create it. Point a fan across the room, not directly at the baby, and only use one if the room is below 35°C — above that, moving hot air around does nothing useful and can dehydrate rather than cool.

• Feed on demand, not on schedule. Breastfed babies need more frequent feeds in heat, not water. Formula-fed babies can have small amounts of cooled boiled water between feeds if they seem thirsty.

• A cool flannel beats an ice pack. Sponging down the back of the neck, wrists, and forehead with lukewarm — not cold — water helps without shocking the system.

• Leave the room, if you can. If your home has one cooler room — even a hallway, even downstairs — that's where the day happens. You don't need air conditioning. You need somewhere that isn't your bedroom at 3pm. A mattress in the kitchen, if it’s cooler, can make sleep bearable for everyone.

The bit nobody puts in the leaflet

Hot homes aren't evenly distributed. Poorly insulated flats, homes without through-ventilation, and overcrowded housing all trap heat far more than the detached house with a garden that most public health graphics seem to imagine. If you're exhausted, worried, and your home simply isn't built to cool down, that isn't a parenting failure — it's a housing one.

Naming that doesn't fix the temperature tonight, but it might stop you carrying guilt that was never yours to carry.

If you're supporting a new parent through this — as a doula, a friend, a health visitor — the most useful thing you can offer this week isn't reassurance that it will pass. It's practical: bringing a fan, sitting with them in the coolest room in the house, checking in without waiting to be asked.

This heat won't last. But how supported people feel while it does — that's still something we can change.

• Michelle