Modern Mum Facebook ad: “If you have a baby during this heatwave.”

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The moment I told the doctor I couldn't find a portable AC for my baby anywhere, she stopped writing. "Good. You don't need one." I just stared at her. Two weeks. That's how long I'd spent trying to get hold of one of those machines. It was the whole reason I was sat there looking half dead. My little girl is four months old. Since the first hot night in June she hasn't properly slept, and neither have I. She goes down fine. Then an hour later she's crying, cheeks flushed, hair stuck to the side of her head, wriggling like she can't get comfy on her own mattress. I'd lift her and the back of her babygro would be damp. Every time. You get told the room has to be 16 to 20 for them to sleep safe. Ours sits at 29. 30 on a bad night. The little Groegg's been on its red face so long I've stopped looking at it. So of course I did what everyone was doing. Tried to get hold of a portable air con unit. Sold out. Everywhere. Half the country had the same idea. I spent nights on my phone instead of sleeping. Refreshing Argos. Refreshing Amazon at 2am like stock was going to appear out of nowhere. The one shop that said "in stock" took my order and emailed two days later to say sorry, cancelled. In the meantime I did the obvious stuff. Blinds shut from 6am. Her down to just a nappy. The fan going all night, angled right at the cot. Everyone swears by a fan. It's the first thing anyone tells you. And she was still waking up hot every night. Damp on the back of the neck, wriggling and moaning at me by 1am. It just moved the warm air round the room. She stayed exactly as hot as she was before. Then one night it stopped being about sleep. I went in for the 2am feed and she was burning up. Not just warm. Hot right through, her babygro soaked and stuck to her. I got her out of it and she was floppy in my arms. Slow to come round. Not crying the way she normally would. I took her downstairs and sat on the kitchen floor with her against my chest, cooling her down, until she started to seem like herself again. I didn't sleep after that. Whatever was doing this to her, I was going to get to the bottom of it that day, even if I got told I was overreacting. First thing, I rang and said I needed her seen. By the time I was sat in front of the doctor I'd barely held it together. I told her the baby had overheated in the night and frightened the life out of me. That I'd tried everything. That I still couldn't get hold of an AC to stop it happening again. That's when she put her pen down. "Can I ask what you're actually trying to cool?" "The room. It's an oven up there." "Right. And you'll never win that one. Houses here are built to hold heat, no air con, carpet everywhere. Even the units people are queuing for only get a bedroom to about 25. Never to 20. You've been fighting a fight nobody can win, hun." I started to argue and she stopped me, gentle. "The room was never the thing. Think about your girl. She's not floating about in the air. She's lying dead still on one surface for hours, giving off heat the whole time. Her back and her head, pressed into that mattress." "And that heat's got nowhere to go. It just sits there, trapped, right underneath her. A fan across the top of the cot never reaches it. An open window never touches it. A room unit never gets near it." Then she said the bit that actually got me. "You've been feeling the back of her neck all summer, haven't you. Everyone tells you to. But the heat's pooling under her back, in the few inches she can't move herself off of. You've been trying to cool a whole room when the problem was the size of a tea towel." I sat there feeling like an idiot and like I'd finally been handed the one thing that made sense of the entire summer, both at once. Then she told me about a little company a mum had started. Called Lucavel. "I don't hand out names in here. I do this one. Because the woman who made it didn't come at it from business. She lost her own baby in a heatwave. Same kind of night you've just described to me, except nobody got to her little girl in time." The floor sort of went out from under me. "She went and found out exactly why it happens. The trapped heat, the surface, all of it. Then she built the thing she wishes she'd had. I recommend it because I know who's behind it." I wrote the name on the back of my parking ticket. Hands not quite steady. Ordered it in the car park before I'd even started the engine. Half expecting to be let down again, the way everything else had let me down. It came two days later. And it wasn't what I'd pictured at all. It wasn't a machine. Not a gel slab that goes warm in ten minutes, and not another fan to point at fresh air. A soft flat pad. It goes under her, on the cot mattress. There's a single quiet fan sealed inside it that pushes a gentle stream of cool air up through the mesh, into the exact spots where she's pressed down and the heat was pooling. The few inches the doctor had put her hand on. There's a timer, so it runs 30, 60 or 90 minutes and shuts off on its own. Which quietly answered a worry I'd never said out loud, about a fan blowing on a baby that small all night. And it runs off a power bank. So it wasn't only the cot. I tried it on the worst afternoon of the whole heatwave. 33 outside, the Groegg saying 31 by two o'clock, the time of day naps just don't happen in our house. Laid out flat it honestly looked like nothing. A pad and a cable. I sat on the floor by the cot fully expecting to feel like a mug. She fussed for a minute. Turned her head. Then went off. Not that flushed, damp, too-still sleep that used to have me watching her chest from the doorway. Proper loose sleep. I slid my hand under her, braced for the warm damp back. It was cool. Dry. Normal. She slept two hours straight through the hottest part of the day. The nap that never happens. It's been a few weeks now. She naps in the pram instead of cooking against the back of the seat. Goes in the car seat I'd basically stopped using. Sleeps through most nights. The Groegg still says 29. And it doesn't own me anymore, because I finally get it. The number on the wall was never the thing. The surface under her was. Here's the part that still frightens me. That night, I got to her. I woke for the feed, I found her like that, and I cooled her down in time. But a hot baby doesn't wake you. A cold one screams the place down and you go running. A hot one goes quiet and still, and lies there looking exactly like a baby who's finally gone off to sleep. So the nights that should terrify me most are the ones I sleep straight through. Because she isn't making a sound. I keep thinking about the night I don't wake for that feed. Where I sleep through till morning, walk in, and it's already too late. That's the night the mum who made this actually had. Same heat. Same quiet baby she thought was finally settled. She went to bed, and in the morning her little girl didn't wake up. I got a doctor who stopped me before that was my night. She didn't get anyone. The heat isn't done. There's another one on the forecast for next week, and every summer after this one. I just wish someone had told me what a quiet baby in a heatwave can really mean. Before that night, not after. https://lucavel.com/products/lucavel-babycool

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If you have a baby during this heatwave...

Lucavel