The Cranial Floor and the Infant Occiput
The human body is an amazing and absolutely beautiful piece of ingenuity! As a chiropractor who focuses on breastfeeding support and a regular instructor in that specialty, I zero in on the infant’s skull (cranium) for answers to many questions. I LOVE anatomy and how it allows me not only to explain what’s going on, but also to put the pieces of a puzzle back together, and make the whole thing work again. Each day in my clinical practice, I’m like that little kid who constantly takes the radio apart, puts it back together, and learns how all the pieces work together. Now… I’m not literally taking the pieces of a human apart, but you get the point. Lately, I’ve been fascinated by the cranial floor—composed mostly of the Occiput and the adjacent Temporal bones. I am endlessly in awe of what it does and how perfectly it is designed. Let’s talk about these amazing structures in more detail.
The Occiput is an incredible piece of technology! Most of us think of it as just “the back of the head”. But if we look closer, especially at the newborn’s Occiput, it is a very detailed and intricate part of the puzzle. The newborn’s Occiput is actually in four separate pieces, connected only by cartilage.
The Squamous Part Is the larger, rounded part that forms the back of the head. It initially develops in four segments and is fused in the third month of fetal development. That is all we can see of the Occiput from the outside, but it definitely doesn’t end there.