What happened to my baby???? Adult needle used for immunisations.

[MyRubyEagle]

When my youngest daughter received her first lot of vaccinations, I knew straight away that something was wrong.

The needle went in and then they injected her but then clear fluid started to spill from her leg followed by blood.

This was nothing like I had ever seen on my other child’s vaccinations, and so I asked what was happening. They said that someone had attached an adult needle. Obviously my baby was screaming at the time and they said we were fine to leave. I think I was in shock about it, so I just left but am now wondering how this can have happened? I have no medical knowledge so I’m wondering if anyone can explain how they ended up using the wrong needle.

This happened a while ago but it’s been on my mind lately. Can anyone help?

A butterfly needle is a different type of needle. It has the metal bit but then a long flexible tube. It means that it sits more comfortably in your arm if you are taking large quantities of blood. They use them for adults too but maybe use them more for children in situations where an adult would just get a normal needle. They wouldn’t be used for vaccines.

Leaving aside the needle for a moment. I work in vaccine development. Simplifying here but, the dose volume is the same regardless of the size of child. The way they work is to stimulate an immune response in the baby so that they develop antibodies. Even if only a small proportion of the dose stayed in, it will be enough. Also remember that they get given several doses, to ensure that immune response develops.
Your baby will be fine.

Sending a huge amount of love to all the previous posters explaining their profession. So grateful for the support you offer in the moment and your depth of knowledge.

And having a baby, seeing them venerable is hard. Being a mother is incredible and we all need to hear it's ok sometimes, well done for reaching out.

It sounds like someone has said something misleading and unhelpful to you in a time when you were anxious OP.

So it was many years ago for me that I had a bad situation regarding vaccinations.
I took my older child then about 15 months for his MMR and my younger daughter about 3 months for one of her first set of vaccinations.
When we got home we got a call from the surgery that accidentally my older son was given the baby injections so not MMR , and the baby got the right ones.
That situation caused me a lot of worry to be honest. If the baby had the MMR at 12 weeks I think that would have been awful

Ask the surgery manger to review it . My concern here is if someone is that stupid to not differentiate between needles and did they even knew what they where injecting ? Do not trust people simply because they are a health professional . For years I dealt with clinical negligence and you wouldn’t dream if the mistakes being done daily

When I had my covid booster, the practitioner managed to snag a blood vessel and when he took the needle out, I got a full on spurt for a second or so. Not a lot but was quite alarming. He was cross with himself, said he had been administering injections for years and it had only happened once before. I ended up apologising!

I was in shock about it
No, you really were not. No one enjoys having an infant injected, but unless you were experiencing oxygen deprivation to vital organs you were not ‘in shock’. You were upset, and possibly didn’t know how to respond. Much less dramatic, that, but more accurate.

The OP was told the needle was the wrong one, so for people saying 'no such thing' - fine but then it only gives further confusion as to why the nurse said it to OP at the time.

I'd contact the practice manager just how incompetent is this person - if they don't know that there's only one needle.....

I don't think it's at all helpful to be pulling the PFB routine - you're anxious - on OP. If something doesn't feel right - it probably isn't.

She's got another child who has had vaccines before and there's been no issue - but something about this vaccine has made the OP concerned. Sounds like grounds for a conversation to me.

Taking blood is different from giving a vaccination as the needle has to enter the vein. Normally vaccinations have orange needles as go into muscle. Some fluid might escape and some people bleed some don’t. I’m sure it was fine.

The needles used to draw blood are completely different to the ones used to give vaccinations.

The needles for drawing blood aren’t actually needles at all, they are cannulas - a very thin and flexible tube. A butterfly needle is an extra small and fine cannula suitable for putting into smaller veins.

For vaccinations, a needle is a needle - the same kind are used for both pads and adult patients, so OP is mistaken about that.

Echoing this. I vaccinate 10 babies a week, this happens reasonably frequently and isn't anything to worry about. It looks like a lot of liquid (and blood), but it isn't and the vaccine will still work, especially as they have more than one dose of each.

We use the same size needles that we do for adults usually (blue ones) and they are often supplied with the vaccines. There are not really adult and child needles for injections, if we're vaccinating a very small baby then the needle obviously doesn't go all the way in.

Also a nurse. There’s no such thing as adult and children needles. There are different sizes of needles but there’s no real rules on what can and can’t be used on adults/children. It all sounds very normal to me, some clear fluid and bleeding after an injection is perfectly normal.

The needles I draw blood with are definitely needles. As are the butterfly ones we use. Solid metal, no tubes.
Cannulas are the ones that stay in, usually for medication and fluids to be put in through, though you can take blood from them as well.

nurse here who used to give children vaccinations.
sad that happened to your little one- but honestly no harm.
it was an accident by the nurse or doctor I’m guessing- it doesn’t really matter if it’s an adult or a child needle; still does the same thing- an adult needle is just bigger because it needs to penetrate more fat to get to the muscle so we usually give smaller ones to kids because they don’t have as much fat to penetrate.
the liquid that came out was probably just part of the vaccination, and the blood that came out was probably just a vessel burst on the way out. I wouldn’t stress about it. The nurse probably should have z-tracked it (which is just a way you hold the skin when you insert the needle to stop fluid and blood coming out). Try not to stress. It hasn’t hurt your babe.

🙄

nurse here who used to give children vaccinations.
sad that happened to your little one- but honestly no harm.
it was an accident by the nurse or doctor I’m guessing- there’s not really adult or child needle; it’s just big or small. We use bigger needles on adults because it needs to penetrate more fat to get to the muscle so we usually give smaller ones to kids because they don’t have as much fat to penetrate.

The liquid that came out was probably just part of the vaccination, and the blood that came out was probably just a vessel burst on the way out.
I wouldn’t stress about it. The nurse probably should have z-tracked it (which is just a way you hold the skin when you insert the needle to stop fluid and blood coming out). But it doesn’t really matter if you z-track or not (I just do it because for me it’s best practice) Try not to stress. It hasn’t hurt your babe.

There isn't an adult or child needle. They would simply use one that's the correct size for the job and the recipient. If it was something bad then you'd know by now. But a bit of fluid and blood doesn't mean anything sinister with vaccines.
I don't think you need to worry.

You know what the poster meant… don’t be an arse to someone who is worrying about her child.

Hi OP,

No one on here really knows what happened so I’d contact the hospital to ask them. You can write/email and it will be looked into and you’ll get a response. At best it sounds like they had poor communication with you.

The fact it’s “hard” to make a mistake doesn’t mean it didn’t happen and duty of candour doesn’t mean all nurses are honest and transparent in practice. The midwife made a fairly significant mistake during my pregnancy and when I raised it with her she was defensive and denied it. When I saw the consultant 5 minutes later and raised the same point she immediately admitted the midwife’s mistake and apologised to me.

A family member was recently injected with blood thinners after an operation by a nurse who confused him with another patient during the night, which caused major complications. You’d think that would be quite a difficult mistake to make given the name is by the bed!

I don’t want to worry you and some amount of blood and fluid aren’t necessarily concerning on their own but I wouldn’t listen to posters who are so quick to dismiss you. You were given bizarre information which suggested the wrong needle was used. You have every right to raise concerns with the hospital and find out what actually happened. It’s not worth taking any risks with your babies health. Hopefully the response will put your mind at ease.

Hope you’re ok as it sounds really traumatic 💐

I’m assuming English isn’t your first language as it seems you don’t know what “in shock” means in everyday vernacular. OP used the term to accurately describe how she felt and in the correct context.

Butterfly needles are used to both administer infusions into veins and to take blood out, esp if lots required.
Totally different to needles for subcutanous or intramuscular injections.

Hello hello. I’m a paediatric doctor who has administered loads of these vaccines. Most of the routine vaccines come with 2 separate needles, one absolutely tiny one for babies and one bigger one for bigger kids/grown ups. The actual size difference between the 2 is quite small.

we use the smaller one for comfort and skin protection reasons for the babies- the actual diameter is a little bit smaller so it takes longer to administer the full vaccine (this is why we don’t use the smaller one for everyone, the vaccines would take a longer time to administer!).

all the same it isn’t ‘wrong’ to use the larger needle and in a lot of countries this is the only one supplied. The clear fluid may well have been some of the vaccine component leaking out along with some serous fluid but in terms of ‘loss of vaccine’ I would try to not worry about it.

Hope that helps!

Don't be so horrid. The hyperbole on MN is rife. People are 'devastated' because their DH got the wrong chocolates, they are 'shocked' that their BFF has been out with another friend, they are 'clearly hated by everyone' because Deidre in accounts didn't wish them happy bithday...
Shock is the wrong term if you are being pedantic, but it's used so regularly in everyday speech, people do not jump on someone who has used it 'erroneously'.
The OP has stated she's lonely with little support, so try being empathetic