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WEKU
WEKU
April Dembosky

Shots can be scary and painful for kids. One doctor has a plan to end needle phobia

Julia Cramer sits with her two children, Maya, 3, and Lily, 6 months, at their home in Petaluma, Calif., on Dec. 19. Maya uses a toy medical syringe on an Elmo doll that she often brings along to the doctor's office. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

Almost all new parents go through it: the distress of hearing their child scream at the doctor's office and the emotional torture of having to hold them down as the clinician sticks them with one vaccine after another.

"The first shots he got, I probably cried more than he did," says Remy Anthes, while pushing her 6-month-old son, Dorian, back and forth in his stroller in Oakland, California.

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