How many bones does a newborn baby have?

A human neonate, or newborn baby, has around three hundred individual bones and cartilage elements. That sounds like a lot, considering that adults have only two hundred and six bones. As a baby grows into a child and then into a young adult, many of the bones and cartilaginous elements of the body "fuse" or grow together into a single piece. Babies are so flexible because some of their future, bony tissues haven't hardened together yet, and this makes it much easier for the newborn to pass through the mother's birth canal. Some of these bones that fuse together are located in the cranium. If you look at an adult skull, it looks as though a seam runs along the back and sides of the skull. This is where three individual plates of bone have grown and fused together to protect the brain! It's very important that babies heads be protected because there is actually a small portion of the top of the skull that isn't fully protected by bone. 

Another part of a baby's body where ossification (bone growth) occurs is the kneecaps. If you look at an x-ray of a baby's legs, it might look like they don't have patellae. They do, but during infancy, the patellae are made of cartilage and so they do not show up on an x-ray. As the child grows, this cartilage will calcify and turn into the sturdy bone all healthy adults have.