Pregnant in Paris During a Catastrophic Heatwave

In the summer of 2019, I had a “fun” idea for a piece. Paris was due to experience its hottest day in history, and I proposed travelling around the city trying out its various cooling-off strategies to see if they would help. Reader, it was not fun and they did not help.

Last week, Paris experienced its worst period of catastrophic heat on record, worse than that day in 2019, and worse than in 2003, when a sustained heatwave killed nearly 15,000 people. I now live in a neighbourhood in Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorest département in mainland France and one of the most exposed to extreme heat, and, to add to the complications, am seven months pregnant. So how did my week go this time?

Tuesday

When I found out I was pregnant, my greatest anxiety was the fact that I would be giving birth in summer – many French hospitals are not air-conditioned and not built to cope with heatwaves. I plan to ask about the extreme heat plan at an information session this afternoon, but the session is cancelled due to the heatwave.

A friend who is a couple of weeks further along than me has checked into an air-conditioned hotel with her husband because the heat in their apartment was giving her contractions. They tell me the place is full of other pregnant women, although for most this is not an affordable option. For all of us pregnant Parisians the priority is clear: do not give birth this week if you can avoid it. I’ve rented a portable air conditioner that will arrive tomorrow, and I hope it will get me through to the weekend, when the heat is expected to finally break.

Wednesday

I have a meeting at the public healthcare office this morning. It is already 30C (86F) at 9.30am and for some reason they are making people queue outside in the baking heat, though I am shown mercy on account of my condition and let in straight away. While I am going through the forms, a woman falls ill with apparent heatstroke in reception. “We need water in here!” a staff member calls as people rush to attend to her.

A friend who is away has offered me her desk in an air-conditioned office, a godsend. At a childcare centre nearby, staff have taped reflective recovery blankets over the windows as they spray down toddlers in the courtyard with a hose. Under a shaded archway, a man has set up his belongings and a mattress where he tries to sleep through the hottest part of the day.

The magazine office where I’ll be working is in a trendy converted factory above a modelling agency. This is Paris, where heatwave or no heatwave, it is somehow always fashion week. The staff look horrified as I lumber my sweaty, geriatrically pregnant body towards a sign that says CASTING CALL as various sylph-like figures waft past me.

When I get home, I find my rented air conditioner is delayed. It arrives shortly after midnight and I am too exhausted to set it up properly before falling into bed.

Thursday

The air conditioner does nothing. I am letting in too much heat when I crack the window to let out the extraction pipe and this counteracts any cooling effect. When my partner comes home from work in the evening, he jimmies up the window kit I was too exhausted to install by myself, and the temperature finally begins to drop a few degrees. Hallelujah, I can work again.

On social media no one can talk about anything apart from the heat. A new father in Bordeaux shares a video from a maternity unit; it is 36 degrees inside the hospital and a healthcare worker has collapsed from heatstroke. There have been 25 heart attacks in 24 hours Paris-wide.

Friday

I spend the morning inside with the shutters down, then head back into the magazine office for the afternoon. People in the park across the road sit listlessly on shaded benches. It is 38C (100F) and there is no breeze, but the occasional splash from the fountain provides the most fleeting relief.

If I see one more photo of a young man backflipping into a canal I am going to scream. When I see this apocalyptic week represented in the media, I want to see images of the homeless woman, also seven months pregnant, living on the streets of the 11th arrondissement. I want to see the children sent home from school because their classrooms are unsafe, the hospitals unable to care for their patients. This is what the climate crisis actually looks like.

Emergency services report 109 deaths in 24 hours in Paris, a figure that is usually seven at this time of year. In the west of the city, a bus driver succumbs to the heat and crashes his vehicle into a tree.

Saturday

My body has given up. I wake in the morning aching all over and with cramping legs.

In the early afternoon, I try to keep cool in my local park with my dog, who is still with us and seems to be the most resilient of all of us. We stick to the shade wherever we can. My new neighbourhood has no air-conditioned “refreshment rooms” in government buildings that vulnerable populations can use to cool off, as now provided in every town hall in central Paris.

Instead I take shelter at the movies (Disclosure Day: 3/10, cinema air-conditioning: 10/10).

By the end of the week, health authorities have announced 1,000 deaths in France over a three-day period. The unthinkable toll of toddlers who have perished in hot cars is now four. Drowning deaths have reached 74.

When I last wrote a diary like this in 2019, I felt a gnawing anxiety about global heating that never quite left me. But now my feeling is one of outright fury.

The homegrown fossil fuel company TotalEnergies brought in a profit of €5.8bn (£5bn) in the first quarter of 2026, and the AI lobby is pushing the EU to abandon its already inadequate climate ambitions to prioritise building datacentres. The city authorities have put in place some measures to cope, but it still feels as though we are being abandoned to our fate by those in power. And yes, even pregnant, I am still one of the lucky ones.