The other night I was talking with my sister who is a nurse and has been trained as a certified infertility endocrinologist. I was telling her that we were bringing our 8 month old daughter in for her latest blood draw and that this would be the first time for us to try the emla cream. I told her how others have had difficulties with it especially in small children as it is a vasoconstrictor and therefore makes the veins hard to draw blood from. She informed me that if we had a problem with it that there is another numbing cream that they use in her office for work on veins when to constrict them would make the treatment less effective. She says it is called Elamax and that you can get it 4% over the counter and I believe 5% with a prescription. It has one of the same ingredients as emla (lidocane) but not the one the vasoconstrictor one. I hope this helps those of you that have had problems with emla or cannot get the prescription. Happy Holidays!