Flat head
Also called flathead, flat heads, flat head syndrome, flat spot, flat-headed
Flat head is the everyday name for a baby's head that has gone flat at the back or on one side, often from spending a lot of time lying down. The NHS calls it flat head syndrome, and doctors call it plagiocephaly or brachycephaly.
How it's said
AIBU to wonder why he has a flat head and they don't?
My friend's baby had flathead.
Now my youngest had the mother of flat heads.
Who says it
Not to be confused with
- A flat head comes from pressure on a soft skull. Craniosynostosis is a different, uncommon condition where one or more of the skull's seams fuse early.
Where it came from
Plagiocephaly comes from the Greek plagios, oblique or slanting, joined to the word for head, and Wikipedia gives the whole as flat head. The NHS uses flat head syndrome as the plain name for both plagiocephaly, flat on one side, and brachycephaly, flat at the back.
Flat heads became far more common after 1992, when the American Academy of Pediatrics started its Back to Sleep campaign to have babies sleep on their backs. A 2003 review in American Family Physician estimated that positional head flattening had risen fivefold since then.