How do Christchurch parents keep young babies warm on cold nights?

To find out how sleeping babies are kept warm on cold nights, the parents of 235 babies born during June 1986, and under Plunket supervision, completed a questionnaire during August/September of that year, detailing the clothing, bedding and heating arrangements for their baby for the previous night. One hundred and twelve (52%) babies slept in rooms with thermostatically controlled heating on all night and 65 (28%) slept in essentially unheated houses. The combined amount of clothing and bedding (number of layers over the torso) covering infants ranged from three to 12 layers with a mean of 7.0 layers (SD 1.79). There was no relationship between the number of total coverings and the use of heating so that babies in rooms heated directly were just as likely to be covered by a lot of clothing and bedding as babies in rooms with no direct heating. An unexpected finding was the wide range of practices between Plunket clinics. The mean number of total coverings for babies grouped by clinic attended ranged from 5.2 layers (n = 5) to 9.1 layers (n = 16). The finding that the use of heating in a baby's room is not related to the amount of total coverings, suggests that this practice could put some babies at risk of thermal stress.