Oh, I hate those blood draws. They are very difficult for my son as well. We have to go to the Children's hospital because NO ONE (not even his endo) can get his blood at the clinic. He used to scream bloody murder, then 2 draws ago he just looked at me and said "mommy, can't you help me?". Ugh, I wanted to crawl out of my skin and into his. This last draw was a little better. He seemed to finally resign himself to it all. (Of course this almost makes me feel worse . . . that a 2 year old has learned to resign himself to pain). I don't know if it helps at all or not, but I try very, very hard to make it seem as though "yes this is painful, yes I am sorry he was to go through this, but, there will always be difficult things in life and some people go through far worse". I know he is too young to understand that, but I think it may help him to see me treat this as just another part of life and not the end of the world. (Please understand I am in no way implying that you are treating it as the end of the world. I have no idea how you approach the draws, just sharing what I have learned about myself) RE: the emla. We used it for awhile. It was tricky because they could never draw from the same place twice and I was left with guessing where they would draw and covering 2 or 3 spots. I wasn't totally comfortable with this (the package insert talked about dangers of overapplying on young ones). After using it a few times, and having even less luck getting blood, the woman who does his draw at the Children's hospital aksed me to stop using it. She said it does help control pain, by constricting blood vessels, and this makes it more difficult to get blood. In the end I had to balance, one or two awful sticks with pain, against 3 or 4 not as painful sticks but with zero results in getting blood. We no longer use the EMLA for draws. I do use if for immunizations. If you children are getting flu vaccines it might save them one poke this year. One last note, when my son is not oversuppressed the draws go much more smoothly. I have now learned that if they can't get blood on the first try, his levels will probably come back oversuppressed. Good luck. My thoughts and prayers are with you!