Blood drawings....

[Pienk]

My son needs to get his blood drawn for the genetic testing and the nurse tried 3 times and still couldn't get his vein. He is 4 months old and the nurse said that because he is chubby she cant get his vein. He was crying so much and he's arms so red from all the squeesing for his veins. After the 3rd try I said we are leaving..does your child get poked many times before they can their blood? Its bad enough having to draw blood!! Not sure how to handle frequent blood drawings especially if its going like this. Whats your experience? Our pediatrician is going to draw his blood tomorrow and I am panicking!!! Any tips or advise please?

[Songbird63 Administrator BWS Support]

Make sure the person doing it is experienced in drawing blood from very small children. We had to ask for the same person each time as she was the only person who could get blood from our son. Even paediatricians may not be very experienced at this. Hospitals have standard procedures that they should follow when carrying out procedures causing distress to a child. They are only usually allowed to make a certain number of attempts, there should be a play specialist available to distract your child, and certain pain relief should be available etc. Ask to see it if you think they are not doing things properly. Discuss the problems, calmly with them before they start the procedure and discuss what you will do if it fails.

[Bond]

I think that this boils down to the lack of skill that the nurse had - rather than the fact that your son has BWS. Our 18 month old daughter has never had any problems with the various jabs she's had. Although, I myself needed a series of blood tests last week (nothing to do with BWS) and the nurse tried to get the needle in 5 times before he finally gave up and asked one of his colleagues for help-

I would recommend that, if the nurse needs to insert the needle more than twice,

[Bond in reply to Bond]

I would recommend that, if the nurse needs to stick the needle in more than twice, that you challenge them on their level of skill. Ask them if they are newly qualified and tell them you'd like someone else to do the jabs.

[Pienk]

Thank you for the advise! Will in future talk and see how much experience they have with babies. He did not get blood drawn yesterday now only later in week. I do hope it goes better!! Do they draw blood from your child's hand? Where is best for babies to draw blood?

[scousegirl1]

Hi. I know that this is much after your initial enquiry but trust that these are getting easier. It took an 'on to it' nurse to suggest actually doing a "finger prick" when my daughter was well over a year & this is just AMAZINGLY easy. I don't think they can get enough blood from here when they are younger (but mine still had plenty of trouble all the other places!). Before they do the prick, I just hold my daughter's hand in a cup of warm water with a toy for a few mins. Most horrible part is getting the plaster on her finger! (even better, we live in the country so the rural nurse comes to our place & does it at home)