Xanthe Hayes is frank when asked about her knowledge of pram safety when she first became a mother.
"Honestly, nothing," the Sydneysider said.
"I saw other chicks walking around with the muslin cloth on the front of the pram and thought, 'Well, that's probably what you're meant to do.'"
That cover almost had heartbreaking consequences for her daughter Tasman.
"It was … boiling hot and Tasman just started screaming blue murder in the bassinet of the pram," Ms Hayes said.
"Then I looked inside and she was dripping with sweat.
"She was red like a beetroot and she'd obviously really, really badly overheated."
Like many parents, Ms Hayes thought the dry muslin cloth would provide shade, but instead it cut off the airflow and increased the temperature for her baby.
Babies cannot regulate their internal temperatures like adults and are at risk of fatal heat stroke.
Australian guidelines advise against covering prams for this reason but until now it hasn't been possible to quantify the danger.
'Under-researched' and 'extremely important'
James Smallcombe from Sydney University has just published in the journal Ergonomics a world-first study that found covering a pram on a hot Australian day can increase the temperature inside by almost four degrees Celsius.
"This topic is under-researched. It's also extremely important," he said.
"I think four degrees can make a really substantial difference, both to the thermal comfort and reducing the risk of overheating during hot weather."
Ollie Jay, who worked on the paper and is the director of the Heat and Health Research Incubator at the university, said there's good news for parents too.
His team also tested a moist muslin cloth with a clip-on fan during 20-minute pram journeys.
They found that cooled the pram by almost five degrees.
"It'll undoubtedly improve the thermal comfort of the infant and what we think that would then do is translate to decreased irritability [and] decreased overall heat stress," he said.
"We know that heat stress can be quite a hazardous thing for parents to deal with when they're outside on very hot days in summer."
Professor Jay said parents should still check their infants regularly, and trips longer than 20 minutes might require respraying the cloth with water.
With those caveats, he said he'd like regulators to update their guidelines to include the new research.
"I think what we're offering is not just telling people what they shouldn't be doing, but it's what they can actively do to reduce how hot the pram gets in summer," Professor Jay said.
"If we know that we're doing something actively to keep the pram cool, that can help us rest easy and maybe focus on these other things that maybe are irritating our baby."
The scientists hope their advice will help all parents across the globe.
"We know with climate change that the number of these heatwaves, the intensity of these heatwaves, are getting more severe," Professor Jay said.
"So it's really important that we think of adaptation strategies, not just for people that are working outside and athletes, but also for the most vulnerable in society."
The research means new parents like Xanthe Hayes now have new strategies to keep their babies cool.
Ms Hayes said she would like other parents to pay attention and learn from her mistakes.
"I certainly wasn't told anything and had to find out the hard way, and I would've loved to have been told that little bit of information at the very beginning and not had to deal with that," she said.
