Getting 3yo to have a vaccination

[PeasPlease]

Just looking for experiences really and advice to help me tomorrow.

DD (3) has BCG and MMR and these will be the first injections that she remembers.

She knows she has an appointment to have 2 injections in her legs and she has seen me (calmly) have blood taken loads of times so she is aware of what kind of thing will happen but she is shit scared. I think that she will be OK to accept the first needle but knowing what she is like I reckon she will flat refuse the second one as any teeny tiny pain or scratch makes her scream and cry.

Friends have said that they had to hold down their DC for injections but I can't, I'm very heavily pregnant with twins and DH can't be with me.

I have told her we can have lunch in a cafe with chips and ice cream after if she is brave.

Is there some magical way I can get her through them calmly without them bothering her??

If you can't hold her, then they'll find another nurse to do it.

I bought a small bag of sweets, opened them, put them on the desk and told DS he could have them between injections and afterwards. He was as good as gold, and was only interested in the sweets tbh

OK, will buy a bag of sweets first - very good idea to put them where she can see them.

I'm not sure I could cope with having a stranger hold down DD though!

i found the best thing to do is to sit down and explain what is going to happen, never lie. One stupid nurse told my ds that it was like a bee sting, which completely undid all the hard work i'd done with ds, as he'd been stung the week before, to which I shouted her down and then made her wait while I re explaned it all over again and luckily for her, ds was as good as gold.
A good doctors surgery should have two nurses doing the jabs and another if needed to hold the child. The two injections should be given in separate legs but at the same time, therefore you only have to go through it once.
If you can work out where you are in the queue and start given dd a little bit of choc before it's their turn (sucrose acts as a natural pain reliever and this has always worked brilliantly for my dc's)

calpol before
sweets during
magazine (bribe) after

DS was fine with his (fascinated by the syringe, chatting to the doctor about what was in the medicine and watching the needle)

DD will be a different matter next week

Well it ended up being a bit of a traumatic encounter!

Teddy had an injection and a special plaster first and everything was calm and nice but then the nurse kept saying 'Now these needles wont hurt' over and over again when I had been avoiding use of the word 'hurt'. She also insisted DD sat on my knee which is near impossible with my humongous twin bump and we had been happy both sitting together on the examination couch it hasn't done my SPD much good!

Anyway, both injections were done with DD screaming like she was being killed and begging me 'please mummy don't let her do it'.

After it was all done DD said it didn't hurt at at all and I have been very positive about it and given her lots of treats and she is proud of her plasters that have flowers on.

Incidentally, between the 2 injections I smelt a really strong odour of human poo, and assumed DD had either passed wind or crapped herself in fear so I checked her and nothing.

When I collected the forms from the nurse after the 2nd injection I realised that it was her breath that smelt strongly of poo! How on earth does that happen?????