Immunizations Without Pain: EMLA Eliminates Needle Pain

Immunizations, shots, or needles, no matter what you call it they make for a bad trip to the doctor's office. For many people having your child immunized is part of being of a parent, and not one of the good parts either. What is done out of the best parental intentions...keeping your child healthy...turns into a traumatic experience for everyone. How can a parent make immunizations less of trial? There are many tricks that a parent can use to try and distract their child from the pain, there's also the promise of a "special treat" afterwards to try and cajole them into good behavior. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the parent to soothe, the nurse to be quick, and the child to be brave many times the unhappy child has to be restrained by mom or by another nurse in order to receive a shot. Not only is this a miserable experience it can set your child up for a lifelong fear of needles and even the doctor. There's something new however for the families where both the parent and child end up in tears at the thought of another shot.

Ask your doctor about EMLA. This is a local anesthetic that can be applied either as a patch or as a cream to the area that will receive the shot about an hour beforehand. I heard about this first from Babycenter and then like all good investigators I googled it. This will require good communication with your doctor since you have to know where and when your child will receive the shot in order to use EMLA correctly.

EMLA stands for "Eutectic Mixture of Local Anesthetics" and is manufactured by AstraZeneca. In this case the mixture is lignocaine and prilocaine. Stated mild side effects of EMLA are redness, itching, paleness or slight burning where it was applied. The side effects that should send you scrambling for a hospital are a rash in a location where the medicine was not applied, or difficulty breathing. EMLA was introduced in 1984 and is available in some countries without a prescription.