Do babies have kneecaps?
2 min readAnyone who has spent a reasonable amount of time with the toddlers will be aware that standing and walking are possible before braking and steering. The impressive qualities of the toddlers in licking or tearing keeps them ticking. Unless they see someone reacting to their spill with fear, toddlers generally bounce back with a smile on their faces and quickly advance on to the next movable object as far as possible.
When it comes to toddling, knees do take a brunt of their damage. They are tailor made for it as the knees of the baby are soft and have a rubbery feeling to it. Be it 2 or 92 years of age, knees work hard to get around the place. An important joint is formed by intersection of femur (the bone of thigh) patella (knee cap) along with tibia (shin bone)
Do baby have kneecaps when born? Yes, for sure they tend to be just softer than yours. In the case of babies, bones are just about strong to support your body but they are just soft to encourage continued growth. Till the stage of adulthood, when it reaches the final stage of strength or size, they are a consortium of softer cartilage and hard bone. The knee caps are no exception to this.
Have you ever given a thought to this fact, on how babies crawl easily and when you do, it hurts you? Babies are known to move quickly with a smile on their face when they fall. Do baby have knee caps? The answer to this question has a level of complexity attached to it. Let us get our basic medical terminology in order. The cartilage is formed through the process of ossification. At the time of birth, the skeleton of the baby includes some 300 bones and cartilages. With the passage of time, bones develop with a majority of them fusing leading to the formation of 206 bones in an adult.
Coming back once again to the structure of the knee. It is a flat circular bone referred to as patella or knee cap which happens to be a sesamoid bone (a bone incorporated with a muscle or tendon) that is exposed to a reasonable level of fiction or stress. These bones are found in the hands or the feet. If babies had fully developed kneecaps at birth, the chances of fractures would increase.
Now once again finding answer to the question on whether a baby has knee caps at birth. The answer would be “it depends” it would mean whether you have a knee cap or not. if not the answer is no. But considering the knowledge of cartilage development coupled with ossification process, you are bound to be of the opinion that babies tend to have knee caps. You are likely to come across the fact that babies have knee caps at the time of birth that are soft at the starting stages which then go on to become stronger and harder with the passage of time.