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Cone Head Babies: 4 Best At-Home Remedies
Updated: May 10
Movies inevitably show a mother who gives birth and has a perfect, cute baby placed in her arms. But this is often not the case in real life (and that movie baby might actually be two or more months old!). Birth, while natural and wonderful, can be stressful for a baby's body and can leave a mark, especially on their fragile heads. Other factors can cause babies to develop asymmetries on their heads after birth.
Regardless of the cause, an unevenly-shaped head can be a concern for parents. But Pathfinder Health is here to help! In this article, we'll explore what may lead to an uneven head shape in newborns and offer guidance on bringing balance back into your little one's life (and head).
In this article:
Factors that influence a baby's head shape
Other causes of an abnormal head shape
Remedies for uneven head shape
FAQs about a baby's head shape
Factors that influence a baby's head shape
Your baby's skull
Your baby's skull is very different from that of an adult, or even a toddler. A baby's skull is more flexible, to make it easier for their large head to squeeze through the birth canal during a vaginal birth. This flexibility also accommodates the rapid brain growth that occurs during infancy.
In an infant, the bony plates that make up the skull have not yet fused together. Instead, in between a baby's skull bones are gaps called cranial sutures that allow the skull to change shape and grow. Babies' skulls have two particularly large gaps called fontanelles, or soft spots. You can feel one fontanelle when you touch the top of your baby's head.
Newborn head molding
When a baby is born head-first, the tight birth canal exerts a great deal of pressure on their skull and can mold the head into an oblong shape, or even a cone.
Babies who are born in a breech position, where the bottom or feet come out first, generally do not experience this head molding and are born with a round head.
Likewise, babies born via cesarean section generally have round heads, unless they are born by emergency cesarean section after the mother has already labored.
Head position as a newborn
A baby's head shape can also change after birth. If a baby spends too much time lying flat in one position, the pressure on the back or side of the skull can lead to an uneven head shape. We’ll discuss ways to prevent this below.
Other causes of an abnormal head shape
There are numerous other conditions that can cause an abnormality in head shape or size, such as craniosynostosis, macrocephaly (abnormally large head size), and microcephaly (abnormally small head size). These conditions are not the result of head molding during birth or head positioning after birth and we do not discuss them in this article.
Common head shape conditions
Cone-shaped head
Sometimes a newborn's head is molded unevenly due to the tight squeeze of passing through the birth canal. This can result in an uneven head shape. To immediately dispel one myth, it is completely normal for babies to be born with unevenly shaped heads--even cone-shaped heads--as a result of the birth process.
A cone-shaped head is particularly likely to occur if a baby drops into the mother's pelvis early or if the mother has a narrow birth canal and/or a long labor.
A baby's conehead appearance after birth usually resolves on its own. Often, the head will regain its round shape after the first few days, although it may take other babies a few weeks to lose the cone shape entirely.