Baby Fontanelles: Everything You Need To Know
When a birth happens, the baby’s fontanelles turn out to be a topic of conversation in families. Some worry about their size, their fluffiness or that time passes and they remain open.
All doubts are logical and understandable, since adults do not have fontanelles like a baby does. We are struck by their presence and the possibility of pressing them or manifesting a heartbeat.
What happens is that, at birth, the bones of the skull are not fully connected and closed to each other. This, precisely, allows the child to exit through the birth canal, reducing its head diameter. One bone is placed on top of another and the head is sharpened, changing its shape.
At birth we do not have 6 bones in the skull as when we are adults, but there are some more. This happens, for example, with the frontal bone, which is divided into two parts when we are babies. Over time, these bones will join together in a process called ossification.
The areas of union of the bones of the skull are the sutures. Between the sutures are the baby’s fontanelles, still soft and of considerable size. Thanks to them, the child’s head can be enlarged without problems following the growth of the body.
The main fontanelles of a baby are two: the anterior and the posterior. There are other soft spaces that are also fontanelles, but smaller in size and that tend to close earlier. Once closed, where they were we will find solid bone.
Skull sutures and their relationship to the baby’s fontanelles
Sutures are the junction areas between the bones of the skull. As we clarified before, in babies the sutures contain fontanelles, that is, soft spaces that are not yet bones, but on which ossification will occur.
As long as the sutures are not ossified, they are mobile. We could say that they are joints, in a sense. As the baby grows, this soft tissue between the sutures expands and becomes bone, until, closing completely, cranial growth is complete.
The most important sutures of the head are:
- Methopic: it is the one that separates, at birth, the frontal bone into two parts. It runs along the forehead and reaches the nose.
- Sagittal: it is the one that runs through the skull from back to front, through the middle.
- Coronal: runs through the skull from side to side, transverse to the sagittal.
- Lambdoid: joins the parietal bones to the occipital bone, at the back.