Real Life Investing With Jason & Rachel Wagner
“Real Life Investing” with Jason and Rachel Wagner is a multifaceted podcast that blends insights from real estate, entrepreneurship, family life, and political discussions. Known for their candid and engaging style, the Wagner’s explore how their conservative values shape their approach to both business and life. They often discuss their personal journeys in real estate, offering practical tips on topics like how to buy a house or investment property while navigating a challenging housing market.
In addition to real estate, the show frequently delves into entrepreneurial lessons, highlighting the importance of mindset, perseverance, and staying focused on long-term goals. They are open about the challenges they’ve faced and provide valuable advice for anyone looking to head into entrepreneurship or seek the best version of themselves.
Dinner table conversations are central to the podcast. The Wagner’s discuss their experiences balancing various topics that families face, while often featuring guests who share similar journeys. Political conversations are explored from a conservative perspective, particularly when they touch on how these beliefs influence their business decisions and personal growth.
With a blend of relatable stories and expert advice, “Real Life Investing” is a show that appeals to a wide audience, from aspiring entrepreneurs and real estate investors, to those seeking inspiration in their personal lives.
Real Life Investing With Jason & Rachel Wagner
69. Standing Your Ground: Why We Declined Standard Newborn Hospital Protocols
We recently welcomed our son Wes Michael Wagner and share our deeply personal journey through childbirth in a rapidly changing healthcare landscape, where we declined nearly all standard hospital protocols for newborns.
In this episode we discuss:
• Detailed look at RhoGAM shots and our decision to decline despite significant pressure from medical staff
• Analyzing the risk factors of Group B Strep and antibiotics versus protecting the microbiome
• How vitamin K shots are linked to jaundice and other risks according to manufacturer package inserts
• Discussion of the new MAHA report that questions the American vaccination schedule
• Navigating religious exemptions and standing firm on our decisions during labor
• Hospital pressure tactics and how we researched each decision thoroughly
• The striking observation that our newborn had the lowest risk of jaundice of our three children
We encourage you to research thoroughly, understand your personal risk factors, and make informed decisions that align with your beliefs. Whatever choices you make, being educated about both benefits and risks is crucial for proper informed consent.
Welcome back to another episode of the Real Life Investing Podcast with Jason Rachel Wagner, boy Rachel. This is actually going to air as the 69th episode.
Rachel Wagner:Wow, what a topic for that number.
Jason Wagner:So what an amazing topic for the 69th episode. And first we have a big announcement to make. Do you want to make the announcement?
Rachel Wagner:No, you go ahead babe.
Jason Wagner:All right. So I am pleased to announce the birth of our son, Wes Michael Wagner. He came into this world on May 15th 2025. Oh, I can't remember the time. Was it 1108? Yeah, 1108. Yes, yeah. Eight pounds three ounces, 20 and a half inches long.
Rachel Wagner:Yes, right, it's amazing you're remembering these stats because you still struggle with the stats on the girls.
Jason Wagner:Nobody remembers their stats on their Our children are now five and three. There's no way that anybody remembers the length of their child, their first born child yeah, I did not remember the length especially their second born child, if they just had a third born child. Okay, yeah, those are hard stats the length, maybe people remember the weight yeah but the the length is kind of like.
Jason Wagner:yeah, I agree, I don't know People talk about the weight a lot more. Anyways, we had a very fascinating birth story. Is that what you would call it A birth story?
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, it's a birth story for sure. I don't know how fascinating it is, but it was vastly different.
Jason Wagner:We're going to do a whole podcast episode about it. It's definitely fascinating. This is going to be one of the most fascinating conversations that somebody is going to have, and I'm glad that I'm doing it with you because this is our firsthand experience of what it was like to have a child in the hospital in today's 2025 age, when we have Donald Trump as the President of the United States, robert Kennedy Jr as head of HHS and massive worldwide changes happening literally by the minute and today is the 23rd of May, and just yesterday, kennedy came out with this big MAHA report, which is 75 pages pages long, which is really diving into the whole. Why are our kids so sick? Why do we have the most unhealthy children of like all the other countries? Yeah, and we spend the most on health care, and so they put together this very comprehensive report.
Jason Wagner:I haven't read it, I've read snippets of it. I actually have it printed out right next to me, which is kind of cool, but anyways, there's a hell of a lot happening, and when you are parents or you are people that are pregnant and you're about to give birth, in this very confusing point in time, there's a lot of decisions that need to be made right when your child is born. So many life, potentially life-altering decisions that need to be made.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah.
Jason Wagner:And.
Rachel Wagner:Definitely life-altering, yeah.
Jason Wagner:Absolutely, absolutely. And the easy way to go about it was how we kind of did with our first two children, which was just go with the recommendations, listen to whatever the recommendations are, follow the experts.
Jason Wagner:Yep, yep but when you have all of this change happening literally right now, when you have new leadership. That is saying the previous recommendations aren't always making sense, but those are still the recommendations as of when Wes was born. What the hell do you do? Right, yeah, all right, so we're going to get into it. How do you want to start this one from your perspective? Actually, you're the mother.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, I mean I think we can kind of summarize how we got to this point. We've shared in previous podcasts some information on our firstborn and how many changes we saw occur in her as we were going with the recommendations. It took some time for us to put pieces together and understanding what was happening for her, why it was happening, but now it's clear as day and she's really the catalyst that led us to the point where we're at now, whereas this pregnancy and this birth we declined I don't know probably 95% of the recommendations of standardized care from initial pregnancy. Really, you know at what I think it's like 26 weeks or something like that, they start recommending all these vaccines while you're pregnant, right, and previously I got them.
Rachel Wagner:I never got the flu shot while I was pregnant with the other two but and I didn't get the COVID shot while I was pregnant with Layla, but I got the Tdap shot while I was pregnant and the Rogam shot, which isn't applicable to everybody. A Rogam shot is only applicable to mothers who have a negative blood type and a partner who has a positive blood type. I'm not going to go through all the details of that because it's not relevant to most people no, but it's very relevant to our situation so we are absolutely talking about that okay.
Rachel Wagner:Well, I guess the point is in pregnancy. The recommendation for this pregnancy would have been to receive a flu shot, a COVID shot, an RSV shot, a RhoGAM shot while pregnant and post-birth. And did I say Tdap, flu, rsv, covid, rhogam, tdap, so five injections while pregnant.
Jason Wagner:So you're telling me you declined all those?
Rachel Wagner:We declined all of those, yes, and the only one that was really balked at was the Rogam. I think I had made it pretty clear I wasn't getting any of the other ones and so there wasn't much discussion around those. But Rogam was discussed several times during pregnancy with the midwife and the doctor, and I was just told over and over again what a stupid decision that was, and they couldn't understand why I would be declining it. Nobody ever declines this. Why would you decline it? It's not a vaccine. Well, so you want me to go through what it is?
Jason Wagner:Absolutely.
Rachel Wagner:Okay. So if you are a woman who has a negative blood type so A-neg, o-neg, ab-neg, anything negative, the recess value negative, and your partner, the father, has a positive blood type, your baby could very well have a positive blood type as well and is actually more likely to have a positive blood type. If that happens when you are pregnant or during birth, if there's any baby's blood, so the positive blood that enters the mother's bloodstream, it will or may create a immune response that creates antibodies against the positive blood type. It's very rare that any issue would occur with the current pregnancy. The risk is to any future pregnancy. So he was not at risk of having any type of sensitization attack from my immune system, but the conversation was always around.
Rachel Wagner:If you have another kid and you are sensitized from this pregnancy, your body may attack the fetus. So you may suffer several miscarriages. If the baby is like brought to term, they could be anemic because your immune system is attacking the fetus. And so they say you know, in order to prevent that and keep the baby in utero, they would do inner utero blood transfusions, where they go in, actually paralyze the baby temporarily and then inject blood into the baby to keep them from being anemic because my immune system would be attacking the baby because it recognizes it as like a foreign invader with the with the blood type. So they ask you or tell you you have to get this RhoGAM shot, which basically is a temporary infusion of plasma that carries these antibodies to prevent your body from becoming sensitized.
Rachel Wagner:I got the shot with with both the girls, scarlett and Layla. It's interesting because I didn't need it with Layla because she has negative blood type. I did need it with Scarlett, or need it you know quotes and so with Scarlett I had it while pregnant and then immediately after birth as well, because that's the recommendation this time around.
Jason Wagner:Oh, two times.
Rachel Wagner:Yes, yes. So with Layla, after she was born and they tested her blood type, they're like oh, she's negative, so you don't need to get Rogam. The annoying thing about that is you can find out while you are pregnant what your baby's blood type is. It's a part of the 12 week. What do they call that? Genetic testing? I didn't know that until later in this pregnancy.
Rachel Wagner:So I we went through the genetic testing at 12 weeks, got it back and then I asked, as we were having all these Rogam conversations of like, well, can't we find out, like, what baby's blood type is? And they said, well, we could have, we could have done that when you did the genetic testing, but you already did it, so we didn't check that box. Well, why the hell not Like, already did it? So we didn't check that box. Well, why the hell not Like, why wasn't that a conversation, right? So we ended up I ended up saying, well, I want the test redone, because if the baby's negative, then this is a moot point, we can stop talking about it. If the baby's positive, you know, my husband and I can continue to have this conversation and make a decision for ourselves, but right now we're talking so many hypotheticals, right. So they agreed to redo the screening, pay cash for it out of pocket it was like 250 bucks. But I was so annoyed because I'm like here I am, you know my blood type. Why wouldn't you have included this as part of the testing to begin with, to avoid giving me pharmaceuticals that I may not need right? First red flag, but anyway. So baby came back positive, so the conversation was still on the table.
Rachel Wagner:So Rogam, again, it's technically not a vaccine, it's a human plasma injection and as you look into Rogam, it is comprised of pooled human blood, so multiple donors. You're not receiving plasma for one specific donor, you're receiving it from up to eight different donors. And that was a red flag for me because, as we have talked about with COVID, there's concerns from our perspective on the amount of spike protein that may exist in people's bodies and certainly the amount of people who got the COVID shot. Am I interested in accepting blood from up to eight different donors who may have had several COVID injections or COVID several times, or may have a ton of spike protein in their blood? And so that was my thought process and the doctors were all like, oh, it's all filtered, it's fine. Well, on the website. Maybe I pull it up so I'm like real specific on it.
Jason Wagner:Sure.
Rachel Wagner:Of course the blood is filtered, but there's a very clear disclaimer that says there's no guarantee that you're not going to pass any blood infectious diseases like HIV or anything. So that's true of like any any transfusion, Right. So the risk is relatively low for that. But my, my concern was really, you know, do I want a blood product, as I'm sitting here watching all this illness and sudden death occur around around us post COVID, Right? So it was very different.
Jason Wagner:Well, yeah, yeah, exactly, and that's the biggest thing right, you got all these people that have been vaccinated. I mean, it's a good question to ask, it's. You have all of these people that have been vaccinated and all of these people that have had COVID a number of times. We have absolutely no idea what's going on with this spike protein and for me, as I'm thinking about it for you, that is not a risk I'm willing to take. I am not willing because you and I are both unvaccinated against COVID. We never got the COVID vaccine to take a risk for you to have a blood product that may or may not contain this, in which we don't know, we're not, you know, we're not the science guys, we're not analyzing this stuff, but it just you kind of ask the question, it kind of makes logical sense that you could have an issue there.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah. And so what they do address this on the Rogan website where they say you know, it inactivates the enveloped viruses or those covered with a fatty outer coat similar to COVID-19. So what that said to me is well, it's not fully removed. They've done something to the spike protein to inactivate it, and that. That, to me, is not the same thing. Again, I'm not a scientist, I'm just sitting here looking at it critically and I will say, I'm looking at it from the lens of this is preventative. This isn't life-saving. So you know.
Rachel Wagner:They asked me, you know, are you willing to have a blood transfusion? Well, yeah, if I'm bleeding out on the table, dying, of course I want you to take life-saving measures. I'm not signing a DNR, I'm not saying that I don't want blood ever. I'm saying from a preventative perspective why am I going to inject up to eight different plasma donors into my body while I'm carrying a baby that I also don't know a lot about? Right, why would I do that preventatively? So, and then it took it a little farther of like what is actually the risk of me becoming sensitized, and the risk varies from each partner set because it's based on, like your blood types and so because I'm a positive or I'm a negative and you're a positive. We actually do carry the highest risk of sensitization, but the risk level was 16% that I would become sensitized, and so, from our perspective, this is our third 16, but that was with other factors, wasn't it?
Rachel Wagner:no 16 that I would become sensitized. But the thought is again, this is what was the whole point if you got a fever oh, that's gbs. That's the next thing.
Jason Wagner:This this is still Rogan oh okay, okay, sorry. That's okay, keep going.
Rachel Wagner:I know this is why I didn't want to get in the weeds, but it's okay, so I'm almost done.
Rachel Wagner:So I have a 16% chance of becoming sensitized. If I become sensitized, there is a blood test that I can take to tell me that I'm sensitized and then we can take prevent ourselves to not get pregnant again. Right, it's no guarantee, but, like the risk of becoming sensitized was so low, the risk to this baby was practically none. We don't even know if we want to have a fourth child. So this is all so hypothetical conversation that we decided that it's a, it's a hard no. And over and over and over again, they were just like this is crazy. Nobody, nobody ever, does this. Why would you want to risk this?
Rachel Wagner:So many unplanned pregnancies happen. Like what, what are you going to do? And I got asked several times in the hospital like, am I going to get my tubes tied or not? The hospital at my appointments, if I'm going to get my tubes tied or if I'm going to have my husband have a vasectomy. And I just looked at them again. I'm like, if I come back sensitized, then we can have that conversation, but we don't even know that I'm going to become sensitized at this point they're just assuming that the 16 chance is going to be automatic.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, they're just making this assumption that I'm going to be sensitized and it's like I may not be so fast forward to being in the hospital and in labor. We're declining rogam and I'm literally in active labor, having contractions, leaning over the bed in pain, and this doctor comes in and is like tossing the paperwork over to us about how stupid it is, and literally looks at Jason and says, so, are you having a vasectomy or is she going to have her tubes tied? Yeah, literally asking me that question. I was literally in the middle of a contraction and I just looked at him and I took a really deep breath, him and I took a really deep breath and I'm just like we will test my blood after birth to see if I'm sensitized and we will test it again at six weeks. Testing blood after birth is standard anyways. What I'm asking for is to also test it at six weeks and they're like we don't really have a protocol for that. But whatever, so fast forward after birth, so fast forward after birth.
Rachel Wagner:My initial blood tests came back zero antibodies present. As of post-birth, I was not sensitized at all. So we'll repeat the test at six weeks to see and then you and I will know whether or not we have a super high risk to have another baby. Or we're in the clear to have another baby. Should we choose to do that Right Again. It's so hypothetical, but that's. Or we're in the clear to have another baby. Should we choose to do that Right Again. It's so hypothetical, but that's where we're at Incredible, absolutely incredible.
Jason Wagner:I actually looked at it as a very easy. This was a very easy thing for me because, as we've grown closer to God, it's like if God wants us to have another baby, he's going to allow us to have another baby, and if we can't have another baby, then we won't have another baby. To me, we already have two beautiful children. We're adding a third Like this is more than I could have ever asked for.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, you said that right away. I'm fretted over it a lot, and you're just like Rachel if we're meant to have another child, we'll have another child. If we're not meant to have another child, we won't.
Jason Wagner:When you put your faith in the middle of these decisions, it becomes so much more clear, so much more clear, and you feel confident in your decision, because what those doctors are selling on you is that, oh, you're never going to have another child.
Rachel Wagner:Well, no, it was. You're going to accidentally get pregnant and have a really sick, awful pregnancy. And I think he said to me at one point why would you ever want to put your baby through that? And I'm just looking at it, I'm like I don't. Well, of course I don't. Nobody wants that. Are you kidding? Like what a stupid thing to ask. But I think what you said is so reflective of what this entire pregnancy and birth has been of just like really leaning into faith and faith over fear, faith over fear.
Rachel Wagner:I mean, the fear comes and you just got to push through it with your faith. But yeah, so that's, that's the Rogam thing.
Jason Wagner:All right, that's. That's only a portion of it. Yeah, and that's great. Ok, victory for us on Rogam, right, you could. That's only a portion of it. Yeah, and that's great. Okay, victory for us on program Right. You could say that so far yeah. I wasn't sensitized post-birth.
Rachel Wagner:So you were asking about risk factors. So, like what I had told them along the way too, is like if something happens and there's reason to believe that there's some type of internal bleeding or cross cross meshing of of blood like I get into an accident, or there's some sort of trauma that happens, or birth is really traumatic, or when the placenta comes out it's, you know, deteriorated, or there's bleeding from the placenta or something Then there's a clear indication that, like, our blood could have cross paths and then your risk level, I think, is significantly greater and I could choose to get Rogam up until seven days post birth. So, like what I was saying is like, as of now, this is a very healthy pregnancy, birth was very healthy. There was zero reason to believe that our risk level was anything greater than that 16% and that 16% for us was enough to be like okay, we have three kids, we're willing to take that risk of potentially not having a fourth.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that made a lot of sense to me. Yeah, all right, so let's go into this GBS thing and what the heck that was, because this was kind of an interesting conversation and I'll tell you. I'll tell you, saying no to these things is hard. Yeah, you're in the middle of the moment here. Rachel just said she's in the middle of a contraction when she's being talked about these big decisions. Are you doing this or are you not? And we've already told them no to begin with. But they just want to make sure.
Jason Wagner:Just like any salesman, any salesman, I want to go sell you this little widget. I go knock on your door and you're like nope, not interested. Well, I'm going to come back again tomorrow. I may call you, I may send you a mailer, I may end up, you know, knocking on your door again. I really want to pester you, to get you to say yes, because that's what sales is To break you down. Yeah, you get six no's. You might get yes on a seventh attempt. This is the same exact technique that they use in the hospital and you have to be prepared for it.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, and it's upsetting because, like you said, we'd already stated all of these things and so to then come back, when you're in distress and a heightened emotional state and pressure, again amongst all this fear, and ask such pointed, direct, really unprofessional questions of okay, well, are you going to have a vasectomy, Are you going to get your tube size? Like well, I'm in the middle of having a baby Like what a ridiculous thing to ask us in this moment.
Jason Wagner:And just so this is clear this was the doctor that delivered our baby.
Jason Wagner:If you've been following me on Instagram lately, I've been posting a few ex comments and you can go out to my ex and you can see all the things that I've been kind of talking about. This doctor, egomaniac, fear monger, actually one of the number one fear salesmen I have ever met and a guy who's been in the business for it is a business, been in the business for 30 plus years and you know, here's the beautiful part is that we did get to have, after Wes was born, we did get to have over an hour conversation with him. He stayed with us for over an hour and he really wanted to have a dialogue with us, and so that's where we really got to learn about him, his thought processes. And I asked him point blank I'm like you know, there's a lot happening right now. When you got Kennedy that's going in and he's shaking up everything, how do we know that all of these recommendations are still going to be withheld in the next couple months?
Jason Wagner:And what did he say to us? He says, well, we're just not going to listen to anything that Kennedy says because he's not using evidence-based science. Yeah, I think our jaw dropped to the floor when he said that I literally think our jaw dropped to the floor. When he said that I literally think our jaw dropped to the floor, like I almost wanted to. It's like, wow, we can't break this. You can't break through to somebody like this because he's completely closed off into hearing new information, which doesn't make any sense, because from what I know about science is that it's always changing right, it's always getting improved and better and better.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, the whole Bernie Sanders statement about the science is settled goes against everything that science is about and says science is never settled.
Jason Wagner:It's never settled.
Rachel Wagner:It's never settled Right.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, but you have, you have doctors and the healthcare professionals that are one way, one way only, Okay, and so they don't want to have this dialogue of differing views. So yeah, so, yeah. So that was very troubling, Very troubling for us. But let's go back to you know, we'll certainly go into more conversations about what we have with that doctor. He did a beautiful job with delivery of Wes though I just want to make that very clear. He did, he did a beautiful job, Very skilled in my opinion of you know the delivery process of a baby yeah, the actual delivery was very smooth, yeah, in terms of the recommendations and the advice I would not take.
Rachel Wagner:In bedside manner. I would, yeah, in bedside manner.
Jason Wagner:I certainly would not recommend him to go. And you know, talk to him about your health. I just I would not.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah.
Jason Wagner:And, but in terms of oh, he's going to deliver your baby, yeah, no problem. Like very skilled at that. But yeah, let's go back to the GBS thing. What is that and why was that such a big deal for us?
Rachel Wagner:Yeah. So another thing that was different, just by whatever reason. So when you're I can't remember if it's like 34 or 36 weeks, but in third trimester, getting close to delivery period, they do a group B strep test on the mom. They swab your, your feminine area and check to see if you're carrying group B strip. I had never looked into this previously because I was negative with my last two pregnancies and this one came back positive and so at the last minute, I'm like, oh crap, okay, what does this mean? And what do I think about it? Because what they said was oh, it's no big deal, it doesn't mean you're sick or anything. All it means is, when you come in for labor and the hospital, we're going to give you antibiotics. Well, that was a yellow flag for me, because I'm like why are you going to be giving me antibiotics while I'm pregnant If I'm not, you know, technically sick? Well, the whole reason is is that, as the baby passes through the birth canal, there is a slight risk and when I say slight I mean half a percent to 2% risk that you will transfer group B strep to your baby as they're passing through the canal half a percent to two percent chance yes of
Rachel Wagner:transmission. Okay, just then there's another layer which I don't have this exact stat. But if you transfer or if it goes to baby, there's no guarantee that baby's going to get sick. But if baby then gets sick, there is a chance that the baby could get very, very sick. It can be very serious where you know, baby spikes a fever and can get encephalitis, which is swelling of the brain, can go septic very quickly, which is infection in their bloodstream, and it can be deadly. It can be very serious.
Rachel Wagner:But again, that's the second layer. So the first layer is there's very, very low risk that you're even going to transmit it to your baby. And then there's the other layer, and I don't have that exact stat, Like I said, that it's going to make them sick. So I'm looking at this and I'm like, okay, like that doesn't seem very sick. You know it's very low risk again. And do I want to, you know, give antibiotics to myself and to my baby and completely wipe out the microbiome before birth even starts? Right, the microbiome in your gut is your immune system and if we're wiping out both mine and baby's, like, yes, baby's gonna get antibodies from mom through breastfeeding. That was my plan, but I'm wiping out my microbiome in my gut and my baby's.
Jason Wagner:So that was a little bit of a which is, as of recently, a lot more talked about. If you follow health influencers or if you just kind of stay up to date on, like the people that are leading this whole health charge, a lot of things that are happening with the body. Start with the gut and the microbiome. Why the hell does it seem like a good idea to have antibiotics injected into you for a low-risk potential half a percent to 2% chance but a very, very strong risk of wiping out all of your microbiome?
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, and there's another layer too. So I said they test you. I think it's 36 weeks because it's right before you're considered full term. So they test you at 36 weeks.
Rachel Wagner:And as you're reading about Group B strep, it literally says like women can test positive or negative on like any given day, like sometimes you could show that you have it and other times you could show that you don't have it.
Rachel Wagner:And so I was like I was talking to a lot of friends about this and they're like, yeah, you can request to be retested closer to your due date, because then if you come back negative you wouldn't have to take the antibiotics. And I'm like, well, actually this doesn't even make sense, because if I test negative at 36 weeks, why wouldn't you keep testing me to make sure that I don't later test positive? So to me, right there, I was like they're obviously not as worried about this. Otherwise they would keep testing you, right, like if the risk is really that high, they would keep testing you up until your due date in case you show a positive, because otherwise they could miss a positive. If women can truly go positive, positive, negative at any point, you wouldn't just rely on this one test. That's potentially four to five weeks prior, before you're giving birth all right.
Jason Wagner:So we were talking about the microbiome, and you know why would you do that to you and the baby and wipe it out, right?
Rachel Wagner:when you have low risk and and not even know for sure that you still have it.
Jason Wagner:So that was the thing, oh and what I wanted to bring up was what didn't make sense to me is that they tested you positive three weeks prior to birth, Right, and I'm like well, well, wait a second. So why are you getting antibiotics when you're not like sick, or we haven't recently tested you to see if you still have that same result? Yeah Right, Doesn't that make sense? Like why would? Oh, hey, I had a. I don't know, maybe this is like too simple, but hey, I had a, you know a cough three weeks ago. I no longer have the cough, but I'm going to start taking cough medicine, Like you know is that like similar well, kind of.
Rachel Wagner:I mean, I think this infection never like shows like it doesn't make you sick for the woman ever. So it's a little bit different, but same thing. Yeah, it's like am I carrying this today or am I carrying it in two weeks? And the answer was we didn't know. All we knew is that I had it at 36 weeks and, as I looked at it like a little more closely to, this is like kind of gross, but it's a lot more common for anybody to carry it in their rectal area versus in the vaginal area.
Rachel Wagner:And when they swab you I'm just trying to like lay out my risk levels, right? So when they swab you, they swab both areas. And so that was something I said to the midwife too. I said, look, you tested me three weeks ago and I said you don't even know if I have it in my vagina. All you know is that I have it in one of those two places. So, like you know, and she's like well, it's all right there and I'm like but the baby's not going through my butt. I know it sounds so stupid.
Jason Wagner:Let's bring the logic back into this right.
Rachel Wagner:I mean, you're asking very legitimate questions, I feel like I am, I'm just trying to understand the whole. This whole pregnancy and birth was all about understanding the risks so we could make a risk tolerance decision. And so, like I'm not sitting here saying everybody should make these same decisions as me, because everybody's risk tolerance is different and your risk factors are different, so there were risk factors that went along with this too.
Jason Wagner:So I think it's very important to recognize that everybody has different risk tolerances, that is like that's a, that's a very yes, that's a very, very big thing. And most people don't know if they even have a tolerance for any type of risk, because I'd say the average person has zero tolerance for risk. That is why they don't start businesses, that is why they don't buy real estate outside of their home. That is why they keep it safe. They only have a 401k. They don't take other risk.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah. And so if you're looking at this and you're like, wow, you know, 2% is actually really high or 16% is really high, I don't want to take that risk, well, that's fine, that's your choice. You should be able to make that choice. You should just understand the informed consent and the true risk. So you make the choice for yourself. That's all. I think. It's the this is 100% going to happen to you, so you have to do it. Attitude that we have an issue with.
Jason Wagner:That is totally right. It's wrong and it's fear mongering and it's sold by these professional fear salesmen.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah.
Jason Wagner:Which are called doctors Right.
Rachel Wagner:So back to GBS so many layers here of things that I'm looking at right, the risk factors if you're a younger mother, if you are of African American descent, if you had a GBS positive in the past or if you had a GBS come through in your urine. So they test your urine when you're pregnant every time you go into the doctor if there's any like proteins passing through or other things. And I didn't have any of that. So I didn't fit the ethnicity, the age, the history or any GBS in my urine. So to me I was also like, okay, I'm not carrying risk factors. I currently don't even know if I'm positive today because they refused to retest me and I don't want to retest you.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, and I don't even know for sure that it was in. You know the area that the baby was going to be coming out of, and had I tested negative at 36 weeks, they wouldn't be retesting me to see if I was positive. So to me, that said, they know the risk was very low. This is just their standardized procedure. So fast forward to being in labor, being at the hospital, they're trying to hook me up. And why are you declining antibiotics? This is really scary. This one really concerns me. Babies do get sick and babies die.
Jason Wagner:Says the first nurse.
Rachel Wagner:Says the first, nurse Says the first nurse.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, okay, first nurse. Then, yeah, hold on, I have to, I have to go leave and I have to go get somebody else.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, it was very much like we're. We're going to have somebody else come talk to you about this, because this is a really big deal. Okay, again, having contractions and labor.
Jason Wagner:This person comes walking in and both people are there. Now she starts saying her spiel.
Rachel Wagner:Well she's. This is the NICU.
Jason Wagner:Okay, this is the NICU, the NICU doctor.
Rachel Wagner:They were like they're like we're going to have somebody from NICU come and talk to you so you understand how serious this is. And so she gave the same, gave the same spiel.
Jason Wagner:Oh, but also at the same time first nurse goes into the cabinet and pulls out a folding chair for NICU nurse to sit down. Oh yeah, this was definitely a long conversation, this was a very specific charade it was a lecture, as if she was doing this, pulling this chair out from the cabinet, like, oh this is going to be a very long conversation, please sit down. That's, that's the way I read that. Did you read that?
Rachel Wagner:oh yeah, they were there to convince us they were there, they weren't leaving.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, for sure so she starts off with all the same stuff. You know this is very serious. You can pass this to your baby. Babies get very sick, they get septic and they die, and so we don't like seeing sick babies or babies die, and that's why we give it to them. It's an antibiotic, it's perfectly safe. There's no reason why you know you should feel any risk to take it. Okay, relatively safe. Of course, yes, I get that.
Rachel Wagner:Antibiotics have been around forever. They're wonderful, wonderful tool of Western medicine. But again, we're talking preventative right, preventative measures when we don't even know for sure that this exists and should baby get sick, there's treatment available. We're right there in the hospital, there's treatment available. And so I actually called the pediatrician as we were waiting for this charade to start, and talked with them about it, and they, they were like, like yeah, we get like, while you're trying to decline it. The problem is, if you decline it, they're probably going to want to keep baby there, which they did. Tell us that. They said if you're going to decline this, you're going to have to be here three days. We're going to monitor baby.
Rachel Wagner:And what my doctor said was you know, they may even say that they have to do extra blood tests on baby and then, if they see any risk factors at all, they would just start antibiotics on baby. And so what they did say is you know you have to decide if you're comfortable with that, because obviously baby getting antibiotics directly versus through you while pregnant is more of a damage to their microbiome than if they're getting that. So that was that was a consideration. It was like, okay, you know, do I want them to come in and tell me we have no choice but to give this baby antibiotics? No, I don't, and I didn't at any point want our control over the situation to be limited, because that was definitely a conversation being put on the table. Is you know, if, if the doctors at any time feel like you're, you know, making unsafe choices for your baby, they can? They can intervene, and so that's something to keep in mind, being in Illinois for sure.
Jason Wagner:I want to point out okay, we're doing a podcast and we're talking about things that, like I'm pretty sure, the average person has no idea what the fuck is going on.
Rachel Wagner:I mean, we didn't with our last two kids, literally yeah, we had no idea.
Jason Wagner:Okay, but unfortunately you just have to put yourself like. You have to learn this shit. And here's the compliments that we did get from these nurses who were disagreeing with us, but at the same time we were rational enough we could talk amongst each other of what we wanted to do. Again, I think we had a number of conversations going into the hospital kind of with a set mindset of, like we've done our homework, we kind of know. But these are some other things. Like I wasn't prepared for an antibiotic conversation.
Rachel Wagner:Well, right, that was a last minute thing, but I think your point was the nurse said to us you know, you, you guys, you guys are a little different. You're very informed, you've done your research, you, clearly, you know, feel comfortable in your staffs, and so then it shifted to, you know, the hospital's just worried about liability. So, you know, we just want to make sure that you, you know, fully understand the risk from our perspective. And if you do, then that's fine. But it was interesting, the NICU nurse came in, gave her whole spiel and then I gave my rebuttal, which was everything that I just said right. And I gave my rebuttal, which was everything that I just said right, I don't have these risk factors.
Rachel Wagner:You know, I haven't been tested in the last three weeks. You know, blah, blah, blah, I went through these whole things and then it was. You know and I'm not saying that I'm set in stone on this decision, because should I get a fever during labor? That's one of the other risk factors is, if mom has a fever during labor that gives an indication of infection being present, then that is. If mom has a fever during labor that gives an indication of infection being present, then that's a different story, right? If I have a fever, obviously there's some type of infection happening and I don't want that to transfer to my baby. So my risk tolerance has shifted right, because my risk is greater of transferring infection to the baby.
Rachel Wagner:And then the second one is my water had broke before we even got to the hospital and so your risk of transferring any infection to baby, including GBS, goes up the longer your bag has been broken and it's around like 12 to 18 hours where they really start getting concerned. They want baby delivered within 24 hours of your bag breaking, because risk is just higher of infection and concern because there's nothing protecting the baby. So I also knew in my head okay, my bag broke at two and so the clock was ticking right, Like I did know that, and so I said to them. I said should I get a fever?
Jason Wagner:What time is it? Right now, when we're having this conversation.
Rachel Wagner:It's like six.
Jason Wagner:Six.
Rachel Wagner:It was like six o'clock, it was like four hours, right, and so I said to them I said it's not that I am like so bullish, you know, and reckless that I'm saying I'm not getting it at all. I'm saying, right now there is no indication that I, that I need this to protect the baby. Right, like, it's really really minimal, low risk. Should that change? I'm open to having this conversation again, same with Rogam. Right Like, should I have had a traumatic birth? Should there have been damage to the placenta? Should there have been indication of like blood transferring? Okay, the conversation shifts because there is a clear reason or indication that risk has changed and you may want to take that preventative measure now.
Rachel Wagner:So this NICU doctor listens to everything he said, very respectfully listened, and she says to us she goes I don't disagree with anything you just said. I was like, okay, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. She's like you know, the hospital just wants to make sure that you understand the risk. You're not going to come back and sue us. And she's like the risk is very small. She's like the risk is very, very small that your baby's gonna get gbs. But if your baby doesn't get gbs, it could be very serious and we don't like seeing sick babies or babies dying. Well, obviously, I don't either. Like I don't, I don't, I don't want to treat you.
Jason Wagner:these people want to treat you that you are the devil and you want sickness and death to happen to your newborn child it is.
Rachel Wagner:It is.
Jason Wagner:It's insane that the way that they they position their comments.
Jason Wagner:Of course not. It was so mean conversation. Do you remember when I got trapped in the doctor's office with my previous doctor and I told him this was in probably mid-2023, I told him I was no longer like I'm not vaccinated for COVID and there's no chance in hell that I'm going to get it? And he turned and he says oh, you're one of those guys, huh. And I'm like well, after everything that's happened and everything we've learned, there's no reason for me to get it. He's like well, I don't disagree with you because you're young, you're, you know, you're healthy, you're a fit guy, but at the end of the day, you have a moral responsibility to protect your neighbor, and so that trumps all of that.
Rachel Wagner:Which, of course, we know now isn't even factual.
Jason Wagner:That isn't even factual Right. So that type of mindset of well, you, and that's the insane fear-mongering mindset that these medical professionals have, and I'm telling you, these are people that have been in this business for 30 plus years and you can't break out of that- yeah, and it's so unfortunate because, as a mom going through all these hormonal changes, being in labor, in that moment I'm already at a little bit of a disadvantage.
Rachel Wagner:But like spewing all that fear to you, it sticks with you. I mean it. I felt very confident in our decisions before, during and after, but there's still that fear that pops up because it's it's presented so strongly in sick and dying babies over and over again. Right Cause that's what he said to me about Rogam too. It's like why would you want to put your baby through that? I mean, it's just so much pain You're going to be paralyzing them in utero to give them a blood transfusion. Why would you do that?
Jason Wagner:What was the actual chance of me doing that?
Rachel Wagner:There's like six things that have to happen in order for me to even get to that point.
Jason Wagner:Worst case scenario literally they put that in front of your face and the the risk of that is is low right and here's the here's. The funny thing is that this nicu nurse she's like oh, well, doctor I, I think you are doctor. Oh, doctor, yeah she was a doctor, oh, okay, okay, good, I didn't recognize that. So, nicu doctor, I think you would ask well, do you have any data to support this? And she's like oh, yes, I do. And she goes over to her computer and she's like we have this great database.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, because it was always like so they always use the words so many babies would get sick and die. And I said, you know, I hear these words. And I said, when I look at like those actual numbers that I had shared with her, I said I'm having a hard time reaching this. So many, you know what, what does that even mean? Do you have numbers to back that up? Right, because you hear so many. And you're like, oh my God, that means everybody, right. And so she's like yeah, I do. Actually we have a whole computer system that looks at all the risk. Funny, all the risk factors that I had mentioned, right, age, ethnicity, fever during pregnancy, previous GBS, all the risk factors that I had stated were categories on this little analytics tool that they had. So she pulls it up on the computer, she goes okay, so I'm going to put in your risk factors. You're right, you don't have any risk factors. So then it spit out a number and it was like 0.002% or something.
Jason Wagner:It was less than 1%.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, it was so small.
Jason Wagner:Like close to zero.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, it was so small, like close to zero.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, it was so small. Okay, close to zero so it just validated.
Rachel Wagner:You know my own research.
Jason Wagner:Thank you for actually bringing in the data yeah, and allowing me to see what my risk percentage is, because that's very helpful jason was literally sitting in a chair with his legs crossed, like he's in a corporate meeting, looking at the computer screen of the data it.
Rachel Wagner:It was actually quite comical.
Jason Wagner:But then okay, but then here's where we, you know, the risk tolerance started to go up a little bit, because she's like, well, let's just say you spike a fever, right. And she's like, okay, now, your, now, your fever is at 104, right, she put in 104.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, whatever. Yeah, just to show the difference.
Jason Wagner:Just to show the difference. I think she difference, I think she said 100.4, because that's no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It was either 102 or 104. It was one of those it was.
Rachel Wagner:Oh, it was 102 it was okay, all right 102. I remember now. Yeah, so she puts in the risk factor 102 and then also added in a second risk factor of your bag's been broken for 18 hours or whatever you haven't delivered, and then it went up to. I think the risk of transmission was like five percent and then something like worst case scenario.
Jason Wagner:There's a worst case scenario of like 20 percent yeah.
Rachel Wagner:And so what they tried to tell you is like you could spike a fever an hour before you deliver the baby and the antibiotics won't have gotten to you or gotten to baby in time for delivery. And that is a risk, right, and that's why I said like I'm I'm watching my bag breaking. But, yes, that that is a consideration. Right Is, if at the very end, you all of a sudden get a fever and they didn't get the antibiotics into you soon enough, then they're going to give antibiotics to the baby. Having been this my third time go around, knowing my own personal health, knowing my very healthy deliveries again, I just felt confident in how it was going to go. That may not be true for everybody and I could have been wrong, right, and then we would have had to take the next step of okay, now, now we need treatment, and now you know this, or whatever. But again none of those risk factors were present.
Jason Wagner:So yeah, you didn't spike a fever.
Rachel Wagner:I didn't spike a fever and they did tell us. They said you know, we're we're probably going to want you to stay here for a few days afterwards to monitor baby. And that had kind of sucked because we definitely wanted to be out like within 24 hours. But we agreed, we're like okay, funny thing is the next day after baby's born they came in midday, so we hadn't even been there 24 hours. And they're like you guys want to go home tomorrow. And I'm just looking at them and I'm just like, well, I, I thought you needed to like monitor us for like three days because this was such a big risk factor. Right, what the?
Jason Wagner:hell, dude. There was actually a lot of disconnects. They wanted to get us out. There was a lot of disconnects that were happening there as well, because we also declined the vitamin K shot, which is a very big deal, which was another big doctor, big deal. Okay, and and I'll even say this, of the people that we know that did not vaccinate their children for kind of the standard vaccines, they still did vitamin K.
Rachel Wagner:Most people. Most people still do Not everybody, but most people.
Jason Wagner:Right, yeah, and because let's go into it, what's the risk factor or what could it potentially cause if you don't get vitamin k? Or why do? Why do we even give, why do we even administer vitamin k?
Rachel Wagner:yeah. So for me, like, it's a good question. Yeah, there's a lot of layers here. So, and because I had mentioned like, or you had mentioned too, like this journey was really like more rooted in faith and we had zero faith with our last two pregnancies, right, and we've definitely stepped zero, zero zero faith yeah and we found we reconnected with jesus and god with the election of donald trump.
Jason Wagner:like we we talk about that in podcasts. We fully believe that this man was protected. His life was literally shown on tv that he should have had his brains blown out, but he was. Somebody had a hand on him and that was God and it turned me into a believer instantly. Instantly from seeing that on TV, yeah, and then, with the election win and the mindset of everybody, all of a sudden I just felt that there is a God presence. And so we have found that We've seen this Christianity sweep where people finding Jesus and God again across the world Like this is not just me saying this. This is like a massive movement of people doing this.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, so it's really interesting too If you listen to our podcast with Anita.
Jason Wagner:Anita Palauz.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, we talked about faith in that podcast and how, once you open yourself up to the faith, things start coming to you and it's everywhere. And so the vitamin K thing actually has an interesting story where I started doing this women's guided Bible reading, probably about midway through pregnancy or something, and I'm in the very, very beginning in the book of Genesis, like the first book of the Bible, and a few chapters in they start talking about circumcision and how God commanded Abraham to circumcise his son on day eight. And I just had this like, like, obviously, if you're Jewish or know anybody Jewish, you know that that's what they follow. But I had this like, like, obviously, if you're Jewish or know anybody Jewish, you know that that's what they follow. But I had never like, actually like, made this connection that that's stated so clearly in the Bible. And so I'm sitting there and I'm, like you, kind of wonder if there's a reason of the significance of day eight relative to you know, the baby's production of vitamin K.
Rachel Wagner:Going back to your original question of like, why do they give vitamin K? Well, they say that babies are deficient in vitamin K when they are born, and this was kind of like a red flag for me because I'm just like why do we have this standardized belief that babies are born imperfect and deficient at birth? Like why do we believe that the second they come out of the womb there's something wrong with them and we need pharmaceutical intervention? Like maybe there's a reason why they're deficient in vitamin K? And I don't know, I don't have that answer.
Rachel Wagner:I've seen a couple of things relative to well. They don't need that much vitamin K because of the cord blood that's going into them, but I don't know that well enough to speak like eloquently to it. But I just felt this faithful drive as I was reading that of just like there's a reason why vitamin K is allegedly deficient, um, and there's a reason why the Bible says day eight, like I just really leaned into the faith around that and I felt the timing of me finding that in the Bible was really critical, because we've been fretting over if we have a boy, what are we going to do? Because if you choose to decline vitamin K, our particular hospital and many hospitals across the country will not circumcise the male in the hospital Because they say if you're deficient in vitamin K, you're at risk for a bleeding disorder and so they want to inject vitamin K to get the blood to clot. Okay, we can start looking at those risk numbers, because I pulled those up too. Oh, you got them Nice oh of course.
Rachel Wagner:I love the stats, so we got to bring the stats in. Well, you know, because you have to understand. You have to understand what you're talking about, what is?
Jason Wagner:the risk factor. All right, let's bring it up. This is fantastic. Anita Penalas. We talked to her on episode 64, leaning into Faith with Anita Penalas. That was a two-hour and ten ten minute conversation. That was so good. It was such a good episode.
Rachel Wagner:They say that this is vitamin K deficiency bleeding.
Jason Wagner:Where are you on right now Chat GPT Okay.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, all right.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, I'd also be cautious with chat GPT.
Rachel Wagner:I know You've said that it's just to like get like some quick numbers.
Jason Wagner:Because if you put it in a grok it might be a little different.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, I'm sure it is. Well, you can do it.
Jason Wagner:What's the question?
Rachel Wagner:Well, what are the chances of having the vitamin K deficiency bleeding disorder at birth? Because even if all babies are low in vitamin K at birth, that doesn't mean that they're going to have this, this bleeding disorder. I'll tell you, we know firsthand of somebody who declined vitamin K at birth, had a pretty hard time getting the doctors to do the circumcision for her son, but ultimately did and there was minimal bleeding. Again, that's not to say that that's true for everybody, because there is risk, but it is just to say that, like these are not definitive things that are going to occur.
Jason Wagner:This is probably where you want to define it. Okay, vitamin K deficiency bleeding in newborns is rare but can be serious. The incidence varies depending on whether vitamin k prophylaxis is given at birth. Okay, so without vitamin k, the shot. The incidence of classic vkdb, which is a vitamin K deficiency bleeding disorder occurring within the first week of life, ranges from 0.25% to 1.7% of newborns. 0.25% to 1.7% of newborns. That is your risk.
Rachel Wagner:Right.
Jason Wagner:Zero to one to less than 2%. Okay, great, now we know.
Rachel Wagner:So then the question is okay, now we know the risk of this disorder actually existing.
Jason Wagner:Oh, and with the shot it reduces. Okay, here it is With the shot you could do. Routine intramuscular or oral vitamin K administration at birth Reduces to risk dramatically. It drops to near zero.
Rachel Wagner:So you're taking your near zero and you're dropping it closer to zero.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, I just want everyone to understand that.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, and again, like I said the same thing, like okay, if there is a clear risk of bleeding. Like we've known some people who had to have, like the vacuum deliver their baby, where, like the vacuum sucks on the head, and then the doctor's like, okay, like there's definitely a risk of a brain bleed because we were sucking on the baby's head as it comes out, your risk tolerance is different now because there was some type of trauma that was occurring at birth where, if there was a bleeding disorder to occur, you obviously don't want your baby to be bleeding into your brain. So that's something that you need to think about and consider, right. So my answer was the same as we were going through this, I'm like, again, I've had a really healthy pregnancy, no trauma. Assuming this delivery goes really well and there's no trauma, I don't see a need to give vitamin K. And I think somebody said to me well, all birth is traumatic it was the nurse.
Jason Wagner:It was the first nurse that did the very natural right it was also a very natural thing yep, that was the first nurse with the chair, and so the reason we were so adamant about vitamin k.
Rachel Wagner:If we had a girl, 100 it wouldn't. We would not be getting vitamin k if we had a boy. It was a conversation because of the circumcision right, because they do in the hospital on like day two or whatever. And the reason that this was heightened for us is because both of our daughters had jaundice. Layla had a very, very mild case and Scarlett was more mild too but did require follow-up bilirubin testing, and when we first started looking into this vaccine stuff discovered that jaundice and elevated levels of bilirubin are a direct side effect from the vitamin K shot.
Jason Wagner:Can you pull it? I'm sorry, can you pull that up with the insert?
Rachel Wagner:Oh, you're so good, you're so good.
Jason Wagner:You're so good. Okay, Because this is. This is a funny thing. We I think the one nurse, the chair charade nurse she said why do you not want to get vitamin k? Yeah, like she's just like baffled, like why why would you not do that?
Rachel Wagner:and then your response was yeah, and they're like because it's not a vaccine, it's, it's just a vitamin. I'm like well, it's a synthetic vitamin that has preservatives in it and aluminum. Well, you can. I think they said to me you, you, we have one that is preservative free. And I said said, it's still synthetic. You're still giving a brand new baby that you know nothing about, who's born, perfect, right, like we don't know that there's any deficiency that exists, I don't know anything about this baby to be concerned that I need to start doing pharmaceutical intervention preventatively. And I said that over and over again. I said, look, this is all coming from a perspective of why am I giving all of this preventative pharmaceutical measures to a child that just took their first breath? Like I don't know anything about them and you want me to pump them with all these pharmaceuticals that have side effects. By the way, there is nothing out there that is perfectly safe, including food, right? Anything you put into your body can have a positive, negative or both reaction.
Jason Wagner:Hey, vitamin K is a vitamin. There's no side effects, it's synthetic.
Rachel Wagner:It's synthetic, and not to mention the whole factor of like. If you look into, like baby's bodies and how things start working, their systems start working. Their liver is not ready to process all of these pharmaceuticals. They are not capable of handling all of these things the moment they're born. It's, it's, it's okay, I'm going on a tangent.
Jason Wagner:All right. So vitamin K. So you said there is a link to jaundice from the vitamin K shot and she didn't believe that, right.
Rachel Wagner:She did not believe it, she had never heard that.
Jason Wagner:She had never heard that. She'd never heard.
Rachel Wagner:I'm like I was like it's right in the package insert. So, funnily enough, as you go down the road of having your children get vaccines or any pharmaceuticals, you know the package insert that comes with the product isn't readily available to you as a parent. They give you like a one or two pager summary of things to look for, but that is not the manufacturer's package. So you know, like when you go to the pharmacy and you get a drug that was prescribed to you, there's like this big, like pamphlet of all the small print that has all this information. That's like the, the inserts. All of these are available online as well, on the FDA website or the manufacturer's website. They have to put it out there. So I'm on Pfizer's website and I've got vitamin K1 injection.
Rachel Wagner:Pulled up At the very top of the first page is a warning. This is often referred to as the black box label and actually they referred to that later on in here, but it says right at the top severe reactions, including fatalities, have occurred during and immediately after intravenous injection of phytodione, which is the actual name of this vitamin K. It says it right at the top. Even when precautions have been taken to dilute this product and to avoid rapid infusion, severe reactions, including fatalities, have also been reported following intermuscular administration. So at the very top of this product is this warning, all in caps, completely outlined in a box, telling you that there is risk of severe reaction and death for this product. Okay, so now I'm looking at and the unfortunate thing about this is it doesn't give you specific numbers, but I will get into that as we go further down into the clinical trial data that is included in the sensor. I'm looking at less than 1%, almost 0% risk of this bleeding potential to occur versus, you know, injecting my newborn child with a preventative drug that has this level of a warning on it.
Rachel Wagner:So you go down, there's a whole bunch of information in here. It and I'll tell you it the insert's only five pages. So it seems like, oh, we don't have time to read all of this stuff, and like it's it's meaty and it sucks and sometimes I don't know what certain things mean. So then I'm looking up definitions, like it takes time to do it, for sure, but it's not, like they're like 50 to 100 pages long, right, okay? So then we go back down into precautions and pediatric use, precautions and pediatric use, and right in here it says hemolysis, which I don't know what that is. Jaundice and hyperbilirubinemia in neonates, particularly those that are premature, may be related to the dose of vitamin K injection. So, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Jason Wagner:Does this mean that there could be a potential link that vitamin K shot will lead to jaundice in your baby?
Rachel Wagner:Right and so right. So, like first time I saw this I was like holy shit. Like both of our daughters were born perfectly fine, didn't have any signs of jaundice at birth, everything was fine. Get the vitamin k shot a few hours later, all of a sudden, oh shit, now they have jaundice. Now they have to come back and get more tests. It's like and I look at scarlet particularly because she had a perfect apgar score when she was born like, literally like during labor they kept telling me gosh, her numbers are like literally perfect. She, she comes out, her Apgar score is literally perfect, there is nothing wrong with her. And then all of a sudden she's got jaundice and we're coming back into the lab several days to get follow-up blood tests.
Jason Wagner:But, rachel, everyone gets jaundice, like I was actually out talking to my neighbor. It's no big deal. I was actually out talking to my neighbor and I remember her saying that, oh, she had jaundice. Oh, her kids had jaundice, oh. And then I said, oh yeah, my two kids had jaundice too. And you know it's like, and so did you. Well, it's not that big. Oh, yeah, I had jaundice. It's not that big of a deal. Everyone has jaundice, they get over it.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, but what is the?
Jason Wagner:actual risk of jaundice. Let me look that up real quick. Go to Grok. Go to Grok.
Rachel Wagner:I don't have Grok. Oh wait, I have to go to X to use Grok. I just go to X.
Jason Wagner:I actually want to bring that back because it was pretty clear AI. There's two differences here. Chatgpt is going to give you the old way of doing things. Grok is going to give you the newer, updated version of doing things, because you clearly couldn't find that risk factor for getting the shot versus not getting the shot for vitamin k. Like you, you clearly couldn't pick that up. The first thing that popped up, and literally there's only so, but there's only a few sentences here, and it tells me what the risk factor is for grok right.
Rachel Wagner:So so we have to be very, very careful with the ai source that you are using to help with your research oh for sure, well and yeah, a lot of times like I do that as my initial search and then it provides a link to the fda insert or whatever.
Rachel Wagner:Like it's just easier to find it because sometimes getting through the fda or p or Pfizer's website to actually find the inserts is a very time consuming process. But also I'm going to say I don't know that this stat is going to be with or without the vitamin K shot.
Jason Wagner:Well, it's just what, what is if you get jaundice? Like, if you get a serious level of jaundice, what, what could happen? I guess that's what I want to know.
Rachel Wagner:I feel like joe roger right now hey jamie, hey, pull that up real quick let's research this yeah, I mean basically, it's like your liver is not functioning so you can get infections, urinary tract infections, septus, impaired liver function okay, so serious it's like yeah okay, serious stuff.
Jason Wagner:Sepsis sounds very serious yeah okay yeah all right. So that that's what jaundice could lead to.
Rachel Wagner:All right, yeah, all right so so, anyways, it's listed right in the insert. So as we started going down like our, our vax journey with our, with our other two kids, we were like holy crap, like why didn't anybody tell us that the reason that they could have had jaundice was because of what we just put in their body? But they don't. And yeah, I don't know, do we need to go any further with that one?
Jason Wagner:no, I mean I think that. So well, yeah, let's talk about wes. Wes's jaundice score. What was it? Oh yeah, yeah, okay, so um because that's like all right, you didn't get the shot.
Rachel Wagner:We didn't give Wes vitamin K and so you know, technically he's still in this window of showing. Yeah, that's like the bleeding thing can occur, I think up to like two weeks. The risk goes down as you get further out of the hospital.
Jason Wagner:He's one week old today.
Rachel Wagner:He's one week and one day old today. Yeah, but they came in at 24 hours to do his screening. Yeah, but they came in at 24 hours to do his screening and in order to be a no risk category, he had to score below an eight and he scored 3.8. So he was very, very low, not even borderline.
Jason Wagner:And that was the lowest jaundice score that we've had, or belly ribbon test that we've had.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, both of our girls tested in risk categories for jaundice and had to have follow-up, follow-up testing.
Jason Wagner:So our unvaccinated for vitamin K child did not have jaundice, did not even come close to being a risk factor.
Rachel Wagner:No, and he had his follow-up pediatric appointment and no issues.
Jason Wagner:Is bilirubin the same thing as jaundice?
Rachel Wagner:Well, it's the bilirubin that they're testing in the liver. I I believe that tells you whether or not you're in jaundice or whatever.
Jason Wagner:Oh, okay it's the actual like thing they're testing okay, yeah, so wow, fantastic result, yeah, the absolute fantastic.
Rachel Wagner:I mean so far, right, like yeah, so far, so far everything is totally fine right, all right um the other one that we don't need to touch on very much is hep, hep b. They give babies a hepatitis b shot, like immediately, and we decline that and literally like in all my ob appointments. And then even at the hospital, every single person we talked to was like I don't really care about the hep b shot, that's fine, and I'm just like then why are you recommending it?
Jason Wagner:Because there's been enough news coverage of that.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, because hepatitis B is something you can only get from a sexual transmitted disease or from using dirty needles, and I don't see my newborn baby having any issue with either of those things and he came home to a home that doesn't have needles or, you know, drug use in the house. So like the risk level is zero and obviously I don't have hepatitis and you don't have hepatitis. So you know there's there's no reason. But it was just fascinating to me because I expected like that to be a thing too and literally like the nurses, my doctors, the pediatric doctors were like I don't care if he doesn't get hep B, I'm like, then why are you giving it to them Every single?
Rachel Wagner:one of them were like that Didn't care yeah.
Jason Wagner:Even our doctor.
Rachel Wagner:Oh, okay, even the wild Mr. Yeah, the Provax everything.
Jason Wagner:Yeah.
Rachel Wagner:He was like that's fine, I don't care about that. He actually also told me that he wasn't as concerned about the antibiotics either. So that's not that. One's not as big of a deal.
Jason Wagner:The likelihood of you actually transferring that's pretty low and I was just like okay I'm sorry, but you just had two nurses here that came in, yeah, so the first one tried. She had to get back up, okay.
Rachel Wagner:Then they brought out the chair this is gonna be a long conversation, then they brought out, brought out the, the data analysis.
Jason Wagner:I want you to see this and they couldn't. Yeah, but that's the shit that's going to happen. Yeah, especially in and hopefully people listening to this conversation are actually going to learn a lot and just be armed with what to expect, because we didn't know what to expect at all. I kind of knew that there was going to be pushback, but I didn't understand that it was going to be repeated pushback over and over and over again on a number of things While I was in labor, while you were in labor, like painful labor yeah right, painful labor, because it was we had people coming in that was, you know, we had just gotten to the hospital.
Jason Wagner:Okay, we had this conversation. You started to have some labor pains. Then you started to have some serious labor pains and they were still talking to you about this. And then the baby was born and they were still talking to you about this. And then, upon exiting, they were still talking to us about this. I mean, we had to say no, probably five times, easily, five times.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah.
Jason Wagner:And I think there were probably a couple instances where we were ready to cave on something.
Rachel Wagner:Do you remember what one?
Jason Wagner:of those was Well the antibiotics. Initially, I was getting ready.
Rachel Wagner:Right, no, not program.
Jason Wagner:The antibiotics, oh, the antibiotics yeah.
Rachel Wagner:Because they so yeah.
Jason Wagner:The GBS stuff.
Rachel Wagner:Going back to the GBS antibiotics so they started offering alternatives to they were trying to negotiate. They were trying to negotiate. So it was negotiate, so it was like, okay, well, what if we just did two doses of penicillin instead of continuous drip during your entire labor? So then baby's not getting as much antibiotic, but, you know, maybe enough to treat it. And so I'm still just laughing about that because it's like, well, if two doses is enough to treat it and not worry about it, why are you giving everybody continuous drip antibiotics?
Jason Wagner:but like it's just like okay this is why I love you, because you can actually like spin it into. Well, why are we even doing that to begin with?
Rachel Wagner:yeah, and it's a fun. It's a fun exercise because a lot of these people like don't have good answers, like they really don't. So, like one of like, I enjoyed having conversation with lippowich, even though we disagreed on everything. We should probably bleep out his name.
Jason Wagner:No, I want people to know it was Lipowich that delivered our child.
Rachel Wagner:You should know this, you should know this, all right, well, anyways, so I enjoyed having conversation with him because he did have an actual rebuttal back to you, so it was actually conversational. I didn't agree with 95% of what he said, but you actually could have like a back and forth with him. Versus some of the people that we encountered. It was like I don't know what to say to you about that, cause you seem to know more about it than I do. You know like. So whenever I would say that, like if you don't have a good answer as to why you're doing this, then you're not doing it to me. So, yeah, the antibiotic thing, they were offering lesser dosages, and then they also were offering lesser strength antibiotics, so continuous drip of something a little less stronger than penicillin, and so, as I was like navigating it, I'm like okay, like then it's still offering a little protection if needed. Like I was caving, because again I'm in labor and in heightened emotional state, and they just keep coming in with all this fear of sick babies dying, right, it's like geez, well, of course I don't want that to happen to my kid.
Rachel Wagner:Anyways, the other one I was going to mention was the eye goop that they put on babies. It's a antibiotic smear that they put on baby's eyes. That again goes back to like transferring infection through delivery, and I don't have a lot of good data on this one, other than just again, this thought of like preventative measures. The second the baby comes out of the womb, like the second the baby comes out of the move, they smear this antibiotic cream on their eyes, they give them a vitamin K shot in their heel and they're doing all these. They're wiping all the stuff off baby immediately.
Rachel Wagner:And I just came back to this thought of like if, if there is a reason to treat my baby, please 100% treat them Preventatively. No, absolutely not. So that was the other thing we declined and that was so. The two things from the doctor from my doctor that he actually cared about was the rogam and the zithromycin. I remember being in the contraction as well of him being like you're not going to be able to find a pediatrician who agrees with this decision, but, um, okay, enhance me the form to sign literally saying you will have no health care coverage.
Jason Wagner:Nobody is going to want to see you if you deny this.
Rachel Wagner:We had the bed raised so I was leaning over to try and alleviate some of the contraction pain in my back and I had my headphones in because I was trying to stay focused on breathing through labor and listening to my music. And I had you behind me helping rub my back. And I had you behind me like helping rub my back, and these fucking healthcare people are standing on the other side of the bed throwing paperwork at me to sign, telling me what stupid decisions I'm making. I'm just like this is insane.
Jason Wagner:Do you remember when we said that there was a, that we believe that there was a link from the vitamin K shot that caused jaundice and the nurse was like I've never?
Rachel Wagner:heard about that? I've never heard. Oh yeah, and then she said that the reason they're seeing increase in jaundice is because they're doing this delayed cord clamping and that the baby can't process all that hemoglobin.
Jason Wagner:Well, that wasn't an issue that clearly wasn't an issue for us at all.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, maybe there's some truth there, and then she says oh, I'm gonna go research this.
Jason Wagner:And then she went back and researched it and then she came back and said yeah, there's no link to vitamin k.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, and it's comical again because I don't know. You just found it in the insert it's on pfizer's website for the vitamin k shot. It's the first page about the fatalities and the severe reaction, and then the jaundice stuff is on the third page. Three of five under precaution, under pediatric use.
Jason Wagner:Okay, literally right there. All right. So you have people that are giving you advice in the hospital that don't even know how to research things that they are not sure of. Yeah, and then they come back and confirm their own thought process before because they didn't research it correctly.
Rachel Wagner:Well, yeah, and this came up when we were talking to the doctor the next day. You were saying we had this long conversation with him. I mean, he straight up told us do you honestly think doctors have time to read all of these inserts? He straight up told us this he literally said that I'm like well, Because if you know.
Jason Wagner:Talk to any one of your doctor friends. If you have somebody that you know that's a doctor, okay, think of their schedule. Or even as you go to the doctor, what doctor walks in. You spend 10 minutes with them. He goes, walks into another room, literally probably uh per hour they I don't know what they see 10 people, oh yeah, I don't know right.
Rachel Wagner:Who knows there is. I definitely think that they're under pressure to move quickly. I think the administrative system of these health care that's a whole nother podcast but is pressuring them to just go through, go through, go through go through.
Jason Wagner:So when he says he probably doesn't have time to to read the inserts or to provide people with informed consent because he also said that he says I don't have time to provide people with informed consent- yeah, he's like because he's.
Rachel Wagner:Oh, I just did a circumcision. Do you think I should have gone in there and told them that their baby could die and list off all the risks?
Jason Wagner:Yes, I do think that you should say this I said that.
Rachel Wagner:I said I think people should have informed consent because we didn't have that with our first two kids and are dealing with chronic health conditions. Yeah, but I can understand. He actually didn't have that with our first two kids and are dealing with chronic health conditions.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, but I can understand he actually doesn't have time to do this. Okay, so then the onus becomes on the parent. Who is? The parent is the one that's making the decision, and I actually brought that up to him and I said that and he said Jason, you're absolutely right, you're absolutely right. It comes down to the parent to do their own homework.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah. And that's what we don't teach, and maybe that's what these doctors need to be saying is you know, this is what's recommended from this hospital and historically I can't say currently anymore, but historically from the FDA. But I personally haven't looked at all that information and I personally haven't read the insert. But here's how you can find it, if you want to make your own informed choice, that this is where you find the information.
Jason Wagner:Exactly. Maybe that's what they need to say. That's what they need to start saying.
Rachel Wagner:I haven't read the side effects of all of these drugs so I can't advise you appropriately on it. But yeah, yeah.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, it was certainly interesting, let's see. You know, we ended up declining all other vaccines as well. And here's check this out, all right. So this Maha report that just came out yesterday, okay, one of the big headlines that they have here is that there's a growth of childhood vaccine schedule, and this is kind of short, but I think I want to read it to you, all right. So it says the executive order establishing the Maha Commission directed the study of any potential contributing causes to the childhood chronic disease crisis, including medical treatments, and to assess the threat and that potential overutilization of medication poses to children with respect to chronic inflammation or other established mechanisms of disease, using rigorous and transparent data, including international comparisons.
Jason Wagner:So we get into a few more here. Vaccines benefit children by protecting them from infectious diseases, but, as with any medicine, vaccines can have side effects that must be balanced against their benefits. Parents should be fully informed of the benefits and risks of vaccines. Many of them have concerns about the appropriate use of vaccines and their possible role in growing childhood chronic disease crisis. Okay, here's three bullets.
Jason Wagner:So, since 1986, the average child by one year of age, by one year old, the number of recommended vaccines on the CDC childhood schedule has increased from three injections to 29 injections, including in utero exposures from vaccines administered to the mother. Of course, parents may choose to delay to a later age or forego one or more of these vaccines. The number of vaccinations on the American vaccine schedule exceeds the number of vaccinations on many European schedules, including Denmark, which has nearly half as many as the US. Yet no trials have compared the advisability and safety of the US vaccine schedule as compared to other nations. This is kind of interesting because we had one nurse that came in and she was all on board with everything our total decisions and she wanted to see if we were European.
Rachel Wagner:Oh, the first thing she says when she walks into our room she's like you're not European. Or she goes you're not Polish. It's like Rachel, you're not Polish and you declined all of these things. Why, why, what have you been reading? She's like Americans, you're not polish and you declined all of these things. Why, why, what have you been reading? She's like americans never decline this stuff she says no americans decline this stuff. Hilarious europeans do polish people do yeah, she's like no vitamin k, no circumcision, like what?
Jason Wagner:yeah, she wanted to know what we were reading yeah, she did.
Rachel Wagner:And then, like she did her initial like transfer of nurse or whatever. And then she did come back later and she's like so I really want to talk to you. She's like I, you're, you're, you're not European. What, how did you get to this decision point? And so we, we had a nice long conversation about it. But she's like, yeah, good, and she said you know, 10 years ago when she started that hospital, they were giving antibiotics to all babies when they were born preventatively. And she was just like why in the world are we doing this? She's like I was so grateful that they finally stopped doing that. But she's like all those preventative measures that you Americans take is just crazy. And it's just again, it's like a wake-up call of like this is standardized care. Here and again, western medicine has an amazing place in this world. Right, like I, I don't want to diminish that.
Jason Wagner:It's the preventative side that I am taking issue with and we're really good at trauma yeah, and responding the preventative stuff is like we're we're, I think we're not good at, we're causing, I think we are so yeah, and other countries aren't doing this, so just something to be mindful of, right.
Jason Wagner:Okay. So, unlike other pharmaceutical products, vaccines are unique in all 50 states and, for some form of vaccine, mandate for public school enrollment through almost all states, although almost all states allow exemptions for religious and or personal reasons. In contrast, over half of European countries, including the UK, do not require childhood vaccination. So we have mandates here in the United States. There's not mandates that are in other countries. I don't know if people know that, but now I learned that in this Maha report.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, and each state is different. Each state of what they require is different.
Jason Wagner:Each state is different. And so well, rachel and Jason. You just didn't vaccinate your child. How are you going to send your kid to school?
Rachel Wagner:Right.
Jason Wagner:Go on.
Rachel Wagner:We prepare a religious exemption.
Jason Wagner:Right.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah.
Jason Wagner:And you don't have to be a crazy religion, right? What's the the go ahead. What's the? What is the piece of this, of why it fits within a christian religion, even catholic religion?
Rachel Wagner:go ahead well, I you're asking me to speak for an entire group of people, and I, oh no, what's the what's the answer? That for us, yes you know as it's a common answer digging yeah, as we started digging into you know vaccines and how they're developed and what's contained in them, similar to like the blood product thing with rogam is like you know you're taking.
Rachel Wagner:You know dna derived cells dead fetal cells cells from somebody else and in a lot of these vaccine cases it's from an aborted fetus and not perfectly healthy, well-developed aborted fetus, because the cells had to be healthy and developed in order to be used. They're taking perfectly healthy, aborted fetal cells to develop these products and those cells may be present in the vaccine that you are injecting into yourself or into your children.
Jason Wagner:Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's not true. The vaccine that you just injected into your baby is not. Doesn't contain dead fetal cells? Does it't contain dead fetal cells? Does it aborted fetal cells?
Rachel Wagner:yeah, and this is very controversial this is very controversial.
Jason Wagner:The answer, how it all was developed, is and did, and that's proven from aborted fetal cell yes yeah, for sure, healthy, perfectly healthy yes
Rachel Wagner:well-developed fetal cell lines and I had kind of heard that, like before, and just made this assumption that like there had been you know something wrong and that's why it was aborted, and like didn't fully grasp that, like you know, the cell lines that were used were, like you know, grown and harvested purposely for this scientific advancement that we have. This is a very personal, like you know, I don't want to be like I don't know, preaching to anybody, but for me, like as I sat there and thought about what was happening in order for this to be developed and then put into my children, and then looking at you know this, the data that that's in here, you know, of all this chronic illness, and it just wasn't the right fit, I just, I just don't believe that and I I don't believe anymore that people are, you know that we're born imperfectly. I think things happen. You know there's certainly extenuating circumstances or whatever where treatment and medicine is necessary, but this preventative intervention that we're doing across the board into our perfectly healthy children, made in God's image, you know, I just I don't believe that.
Rachel Wagner:So that's where our religious exemption is stemming from is. I believe that God created us in his image and that we are perfect, that our body is a temple, and I believe that we don't need to alter our bodies, we don't need to alter our immune systems, we don't need to have this preventative measure when we're born perfectly in his image, and so that's our exemption. It's against what we believe, against the faith, so you fill that out and then in Illinois, you do have to have a physician's signature on the form, which can be challenging to obtain, but it is possible. I know dozens of people who do this, and we're one of them, so it is possible, yeah.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, that's all really. These are good things because me, coming into this, I never thought hard enough that I would ever qualify for a religious exemption right. I never thought hard enough that I would ever qualify for a religious exemption right.
Rachel Wagner:I never thought hard enough yeah, and like I'll, I'll share, like with our girls, like part of their form includes all of their vaccinations. So I clearly state in our write-up, like what changed for us and when we found faith and why we found faith and what that means to us and how our newfound faith is trickling down into the decisions we're making around around healthcare.
Jason Wagner:Yeah.
Jason Wagner:So, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly All right. So so, despite the growth of the childhood vaccine schedule, there has been limited scientific inquiry into the links between vaccines and chronic disease, the impacts of vaccine injury, the conflicts of interest in the development of the vaccine schedule. These areas warrant future inquiry. So it talks about the clinical trials here. Our understanding of the vaccine safety and any links to chronic disease would benefit from more rigorous clinical trial designs, including the use of true placebos, larger sample sizes and longer follow-up periods. Many vaccines on the CDC's childhood schedule involved small participant groups, had no inert placebo-controlled trials and had limited safety monitoring, some lasting six months or less, raising concerns about the ability to detect rare or long-term adverse effects. This is why we are reviewing this all again, because the clinical trials that were done in the beginning that we've based all of these recommendations on, were inadequate.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, a few weeks ago.
Rachel Wagner:According to Maha, yeah, well, I think, according to anybody who thinks critically, what the side effects are positive or negative of any item or anything that you're going to put into your body To me at least, it makes the most sense to have a group of people who receive nothing and have a group of people a placebo saline and a group of people who receive the product that you're trying to test. And it was not a few weeks ago, maybe a month or so ago, that this came out, and I was astonished by the spin that the media was taking on this. But they're like okay, sure, some of these things were tested against a placebo that was actually the adjuvant or was actually the previous version of the vaccine. But because that adjuvant or that previous version of the vaccine had also gone through a clinical trial, it was. It was deemed safe. And I'm sitting there like okay one. I can't even believe you guys are actually admitting this now, because for so long there was zero admittance that that was even true. Now they're admitting okay, yeah, it's not actually like a true placebo of saline or nothing.
Rachel Wagner:But if we don't do that, it's going to take way more time and cost us way more money, and these vaccine manufacturers are just not going to produce vaccines. I was like it was astonishing to me the response to that, because for years they've been saying that, this art, you know that, this revelation that they were not truly tested against nothing which I think anybody with a critical mind would want that because it's the only way you're going to get a true understanding of what the effect is of the product. So for them to just like, be like nonchalantly oh yeah, so we're not actually doing that. Sorry, but there's a reason why we're not doing it and it's because it takes more time, it costs more money and you know people aren't. The vaccine manufacturers aren't going to produce anything if we don't do that.
Rachel Wagner:Okay, informed consent, hello, like, if you want to do it that way, that's fine. But stop going around telling everybody that these vaccines are rigorously tested, because to me, testing a vaccine against another vaccine is not rigorously tested. That tells me nothing, especially if the adjuvant's the same right, like if the adjuvant being the thing that creates the immune response, like the aluminum or whatever, like if you have aluminum in both of the products that you're putting into your test group and your control group and the results are the same, and then you come out with some statement see, there's no risk because everybody had the same results of both things. Okay. Well, if 5% of people in both the control group and the test group come down with an autoimmune or an allergy, that's a problem. We need to know that, you know. To me that's not saying, oh, there's no change in the result. I want to know if people got nothing, do they still have that allergy or that autoimmune? That's the question.
Jason Wagner:That's the question.
Rachel Wagner:And that's what we don't have answers to. And so all these people are getting so upset because of the way the media is spinning this I think are missing what we're saying here they're rigorously tested is bullshit. These vaccines have not been rigorously tested In the clinical trial group. I didn't mention this in the vitamin K. So if you scroll down and you get into the data, it will tell you how many people were in the clinical trials, and in that one particularly, it was less than 300, less than 300 kids. So at one particularly, it was less than 300, less than 300 kids.
Rachel Wagner:So at one point the doctor that we were talking to about vaccines in general not just vitamin K, but about vaccines in general made the comment of okay, sure, there's side effects of one in a million, but look at all the millions of lives that it's saving.
Rachel Wagner:And it's like you actually can't. Even I used to say this too. I used to say it all the time Okay, sure, maybe one in a million has a really bad side effect, right, you can't even logically say that, because the pool that they're testing is far less than a million, oftentimes far less than 1,000 people in the clinical trials, and these things are popping up. So you're saying for vitamin K, for example, it's minimally at least one in this. You know 300, less than 300 group and you know you use that across the board. Like these are things that are popping up in fairly small sample sizes, but anyways, it's really frustrating to me because the mantra is always the same Vaccines are safe and effective, vaccines are regularly tested and side effects are one in a million. Everybody says the same fricking thing. None of those things are true.
Jason Wagner:Check, check this out. So they actually have thinness Allerg. They actually have thinness. Allergies are widespread and autoimmune disorders are rising. Okay, so today, over one in four American children suffers from allergies, including seasonal allergies, eczema and food allergies. Eczema and skin allergies increased from 7.4% of children under 18 from 1997 to 1999 to 12.7% from 2016 to 2018.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, so from 7% to 12%.
Jason Wagner:Almost doubled in 20 years. Okay, between 1997 and 2018, childhood food allergy prevalence rose 88%.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, and I don't think there's anybody out there who's going to challenge that one, because I hear from people all the time all these kids have all these allergies. Now, where did this come from? It used to be like maybe one kid had a peanut allergy when we were growing up. Now you've got peanut allergies, tree nut allergies, egg allergies, dairy allergies, gluten allergies, like the list goes on, and our kid has a sunflower allergy. I don't know if you've ever heard of anybody having that. I haven't but we have a kid who has that.
Jason Wagner:Celiac disease rates have increased five-fold in American children since 1980s. We know somebody with celiac disease.
Rachel Wagner:We know several people with celiac disease.
Jason Wagner:Yeah.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah.
Jason Wagner:Rates of inflammatory bowel disease, including Crohn's, have increased by 25% over the last decade.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, and that's not to say that the sole culprit is the vaccines, right?
Rachel Wagner:This report very clearly says. There's a lot of layers here that need to be looked at right, like the amount of plastic in the average American's lifestyle, that pesticides and chemicals that are used all throughout the food, what we're feeding ourselves, and then also the pharmaceuticals that we're putting in, both preventatively and treatment-wise. We need to look at all of it. But the point is we have a massive chronic health crisis in this country and we need to address it. I mean, one in four is insane.
Jason Wagner:One in four is insane.
Rachel Wagner:It's insane.
Jason Wagner:So I also wanted to talk about here is that, this little section. Here. They talk about the VAERS system and okay, so there's complications in vaccine safety surveillance system. So vacuum vaccines can have a wide range of adverse effects. Manufacturers are only required by federal law to list these adverse events in their package inserts if they have a basis to believe that there is a casual relationship between the drug and the occurrence of the adverse event. There are, however, many possible adverse events for which there is inadequate evidence to accept or reject a casual relationship. So vaccine reactions are supposed to be evaluated in the United States through a range of federal agencies. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which is known as VAERS many people have maybe heard of this recently relies on passive reporting by physicians and others, but provides incomplete early warning observational data. Many healthcare professionals do not report to VAERS because they are not mandated to do so or they may not connect the adverse event to the vaccination. Okay, so there is a specific reporting system, but many physicians don't do it.
Rachel Wagner:Oh yeah, for sure.
Jason Wagner:Okay, let's see All right. The Vaccine Safety Data Link System, established in 1990, works with healthcare organizations to monitor and study adverse events using electronic health records covering 15 million people. However, de-identified data in the VSD Vaccine Safety Data Link, paid for by the taxpayers, is not generally available to scientists outside of the VSD network to conduct analysis or replicate findings using VSD data. Furthermore, the CDC has noted that the VSD studies are likely prone to confounders and bias. It is also geared towards studying short-term outcomes and is not well-suited to studying associations between vaccination and longer-term chronic disease conditions. So it's kind of clear that they have a hard time analyzing the data because of these restrictions or the data that's available to scientists outside of this network.
Jason Wagner:There's conflicts of interest. So the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, this is the very important one was enacted in response to liability concerns surrounding injuries linked to the three routine childhood vaccines in use at the time. The law shields vaccine manufacturers from liability for vaccine-related injuries, creating a unique regulatory and legal framework. This framework creates financial disincentives for pharmaceutical companies to identify safety issues either pre or post-licensure. Congress made HHS responsible for vaccine safety in the Mandate for Safer Childhood Vaccines. However, hhs has the conflicting duty to promote vaccines and to defend them against claims of injury in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. In fact, hhs has faced lawsuits for failing to fulfill basic duties under the mandate for safer childhood vaccines, such as its requirement to submit biannual reports to Congress on how it made vaccines safer. So this law of 1986, you can't sue somebody for an adverse event that happens because of vaccine.
Rachel Wagner:You can't sue the manufacturer, yeah.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, you can't sue the manufacturer. So they make a product it harms you. You cannot sue them. How does that make any sense?
Rachel Wagner:Well, it certainly created a rapid production of new vaccines.
Jason Wagner:And that's why the childhood schedule has exploded. It is what it is. Yeah.
Rachel Wagner:Because they literally have a guaranteed profit line, because the government is going to add it to the childhood schedule and they have no risk. They have no risk of being sued.
Jason Wagner:And there's this last section here this is the scientific, scientific and medical freedom.
Jason Wagner:Open scientific discussion and inquiry has become more difficult with the expansion of childhood vaccine mandates and public health, combined with efforts to combat vaccine hesitancy. Physicians who question or deviate from the cdc's vaccine schedule may face professional repercussions, including scrutiny from licensing boards and potential disciplinary action. The American Medical Association, for example, adopted a new policy aimed at addressing public health disinformation that called to ensure licensing boards have the authority to take disciplinary action against health professionals for spreading health-related disinformation. This dynamic discourages practitioners from conducting or discussing nuanced risk-benefit analysis that deviate from official guidelines, even when those analysis may be clinically appropriate. It also discourages physicians and scientists from studying adverse reactions. This silences critical discussion, discourages reporting to safety systems and hampers vaccine research and undermines the open dialogue essential to protecting and improving children's health.
Jason Wagner:So this is why physicians won't say anything. You have to be brave. You have to be brave, you have to be courageous, you have to know you. You know that you will be punished if you go against the grain and you start saying things that you're seeing Right and so oh it's, oh, it's easy, because you're not going to have think about. Think about the whole COVID vaccine and the silencing that occurred. There wasn't that many physicians that were speaking out. Oh yeah, because, and if you think about like, oh, we can control them, we can just kick them off of these platforms Because there's only a handful of them. There's only a handful of them Robert Malone, ryan Cole.
Rachel Wagner:Peter.
Jason Wagner:McCullough right, we can silence these guys, because these are the ones that are speaking against what we want people to say and, you know, let's just control their platform. And that's what happened and thank God, thank God, we found that podcast. Found that podcast with robert malone, steve kirsch and brett weinstein yeah, on the dark horse podcast that talked about, yeah, june 2021. In june of 2021, they had a podcast you discovered that talked about the complications that were happening from the covid vaccine, and that's because I was getting pressure from work and a little from family to get vaccinated, but I was pregnant with Layla.
Rachel Wagner:And so I felt hesitant in doing so. And what just happened this week? They're no longer recommending the COVID vaccine for pregnant people pregnant women, excuse me In 2025.
Jason Wagner:But you knew this in 2021. Mm-hmm 2025, but you knew this in 2021. And because they knew it in 2021, and that's what has also been reported, is that now we have found out that myocarditis was a thing that was happening in february of 2021, due to a recent senate report that was just put out by Ron Johnson. They just had this big hearing the other day where they brought in Peter McCullough and he testified and they talked about how the COVID vaccine did not save lives, it killed, and you should go watch this. There's a three hour. It's a three hour Senate hearing.
Rachel Wagner:So all right, we've beaten that one a lot.
Jason Wagner:We've beaten it a lot, yeah, but it ties If you think about, how did we get here? Because these are big decisions Mm-hmm. Yeah, and you have to make them in the moment your child is born. And what did this say? There's 27,. There's 29 injections before year, one that you're going to inject your child with. And if you're not confident in your research and your belief, you're going to lose, because what you're going up against is a David and Goliath situation here. How many times did we get badgered?
Rachel Wagner:A lot. Yeah, I think that's why it's a topic that keeps coming up for us and we were so I mean emotional about it was because it was. It was so hard and it was constant. It was hard internally to try and navigate and make the right decision and realize like you're really kind of on an Island, thinking differently than most people, and pretty much everyone around you is like what the fuck are you doing? Why, why aren't you complying? To then be really like face to face and having to argue and defend yourself for years, for years. Yeah, that's hard. It's still hard.
Jason Wagner:It's very hard and I think I told you, you know, if we weren't as prepared, in which you know these, these nurses and you know, even the doctor said, you know that they think that these might be the right decisions for their family as well, but they can't defend it as much as as like what we can, because we literally armed ourself with knowledge.
Rachel Wagner:We were those people, though.
Jason Wagner:We were those people, for sure.
Rachel Wagner:We went through a period of questioning what to do and we find ourselves in the office Like we kind of we kind of were questioning it, but we didn't, we weren't equipped with the information to really argue it. And so when you're put on the spot, you're kind of like well, I've been kind of thinking like maybe I'm not going to do this. Those doctors are ready to attack and tell you about all the sick and dying children out there. If you're not equipped to, to have a stance on why you don't want to do something, you're more than likely going to cave and lose.
Jason Wagner:We did you absolutely. Yeah, absolutely will you, absolutely will you. It's the. The tactics that they have is perfected. I feel like they probably have a protocol.
Rachel Wagner:Oh yeah.
Jason Wagner:They, they probably have a protocol for somebody that is going to deny any of this.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, I'm not sitting here saying everybody should deny all the same things we did right, Because there's layers to your risk and there's factors that need to be looked at Like yes age, health, ethnicity, circumstances during whatever is happening, right Like where you live, your hygiene, you know?
Rachel Wagner:are you taking the baby home to a drug infested area? Like, right, like there's so many things to consider. So I'm not advocating for people to do what we did, I'm just advocating for informed consent. Understand your risk, understand the risk of the product and then make your own decision, Right, yeah.
Jason Wagner:Exactly All right. Well, this was a great conversation.
Rachel Wagner:Where do we go from here? Well, I think we're going to continue to follow what comes from this Maha report and this approach, mostly from like, a sense of like. You know, should we continue to make these decisions that we're making right? Because we're making these decisions knowing that the recommendations are coming from a faulty place of science, but not necessarily having full science to support them as being the right decision, right? So it's continuing to follow and understand what's coming out and how it was done, and you know how we proceed from here.
Jason Wagner:What's your biggest takeaway?
Rachel Wagner:What's your biggest takeaway? My biggest takeaway, yeah, you know, as I reflect on this experience, like in the hospital, it is so imperative that you and your partner are on the same page, and I would even say like we really could have benefited from also having a doula present to be another layer of defense for us because, totally, while we were really good at defending those decisions, having to do so in the moment of being in labor impacted how my labor and delivery proceeded. Right, like it was such a distraction and in hindsight, I see where having another layer of a person to kind of be your line of defense of doctors and nurses why the hell are you talking to them about these decisions that they've already voiced their opinion on in a heightened emotional, painful state? It's really crazy.
Jason Wagner:It's kind of like a lawyer. It's kind of like having lawyer representation or real estate agent representation in a deal.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, it's really important to have A heightened emotional state. Yeah, I mean, you and I were very aligned and you even pointed out to me like Rachel, you're kind of starting to cave, and I'm like you're right, I'm wearing down. I'm wearing down from the conversation and I'm distracted from the pain. I just wanted them to go away.
Jason Wagner:Right and it's easy for make people go away by just agreeing.
Rachel Wagner:Yes, and yeah I did. I did actually have a moment of that where I agreed to something where in hindsight, I'm like why the fuck did I agree to it? But it was literally I just wanted him to leave. And what did he do? He shook my hand and he said excellent decision, we have a deal, yeah. It was literally like we have a deal, yeah. And so what? That, what?
Jason Wagner:that was was Pitocin after the baby was born. So they could give you pitocin after the baby was born so that that would help your uterus shrink? Yeah, my uterus contract, and try and prevent yeah, prevent infection.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, I'm like mad at myself about that one, but I literally remember looking at him and I'm like I, I don't care, the baby's out at that point, I don't care, I literally just wanted them to go away. Yeah, and he, he shook my head. He's like that's excellent choice, excellent choice, excellent choice.
Jason Wagner:It was his victory. It was his victory lap because, he did get a yes out of us for one thing. Yeah, he did, you know.
Rachel Wagner:That's so stupid, but yeah. So I think my takeaway is just like be you know aligned, you know force, and if you can have another layer of somebody there with you, I wonder what our hospital bill is going to look like. I am curious too. I've been wondering that, because they give you like a, a pre-estimate of things, but that would be, you know, pre-estimate.
Jason Wagner:And all the things that we didn't take. Yeah, I don't know, it'll be interesting if the bill's the same, we'll compare it to our last two children. Yeah, we'll compare it to our last two children.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, we'll get an itemized line, but it's a different hospital too, so it'll be different, sure, but still the same process. I'm very curious because there's a lot of pharmaceuticals they did not give us and procedures that weren't done. So we'll see.
Jason Wagner:So it should be a pretty light bill.
Rachel Wagner:Yeah, that was the other thing. I did look up the markups that exist on those pharmaceuticals and it's like 2% to 500% markup. So every time we're declining that, that's a significant amount of profit that they're losing. Yeah, it's a revenue stream for them. They're losing yeah, right, they get the charge for that.
Jason Wagner:They bill it back to the insurance. You're getting the money from the insurance. Every baby that's born, we should be able to get x amount of dollars from insurance. So predictable. Nobody wants their predictable income stream to go away and if you have vaccine hesitancy, that's happening, which is warranted, because I'm not going to blame any. Look, if you still want to do all the vaccines that's recommended, by all means go for it. I don't. That doesn't bother me, like you know yeah, people can make their own choices.
Jason Wagner:Yeah, people make their own choices. You know, or do all. If you want to look at all the research, if this like dude, I don't even have the headspace for this okay, then then go with the recommendations and that's totally fine, because this does take homework. This takes a lot of homework and not everybody has the time or the passion. I think there is a, there's a certain amount of passion and I think the passion kind of comes from it, from specific experiences that have happened to you directly. That's where passion comes from is specific experiences that have happened to you directly that have impacted your life or somebody close to you that makes you want to go down a rabbit hole. Yeah, that have impacted your life or somebody close to you that makes you want to go down a rabbit hole. Yeah, and we had that with our firstborn child, who now has been confirmed to have an allergic reaction to eggs and sunflower, in which we have had a number of scary situations where her allergy reactions have swelled right and that makes us extremely nervous and we certainly want to try to avoid. How do we avoid autoimmune diseases? I don't know, but it's clearly being looked at and hopefully Robert Kennedy is able to provide the American people with some answers of where all this stuff is coming from, so that parents can actually make very good decisions instead of guessing or analyzing the risk levels. All right, so that's really what we want. So my biggest takeaway from this conversation? I think just having the conversation is the takeaway.
Jason Wagner:This is what this podcast is all about. It's dinner table conversations. It is real life investing into. I mean, we talk about real estate, we talk about, you know, health. We talk about working out, we talk about discipline and mindset and motivation, and we also talk about how to be a parent and how to make really hard choices.
Jason Wagner:And to me, this is we don't have enough of these conversations. A lot of them are taboo. They're closed-minded. You can't talk to everybody about this stuff because they're set in their ways, but maybe the more frequency that we talk about it or, you know, you get it onto a public space here where people can listen. In all of a sudden, people can connect with that and I'll even share. You know, I've I've posted a few things on my Instagram story, again with through X. You know just about our experience, and I've had a few people reach out to me and said dude, thank you, thank you for sharing this. I'm due with my baby in five weeks. Like this is the stuff we're talking about, and thank God that you're saying this stuff so that, like we, it helps us know that we're not the only people going through this scenario or these types of conversations, and so I think the biggest takeaway for me is just having a conversation.
Jason Wagner:So, all right, what a 69th episode. That was Okay, all right. Well, thank you for everyone that tuned in and made it this far, and if you found any value, please share it. I'm certain that there are many people in your circle that are wondering, you know, what they should do, how to look at things, how to analyze things. Here's how we did it. Nobody says it's the right way. Nobody. We don't say this is the right way to do it. There's a thousand ways to skin a cat. This is just one way. So you know, hopefully this helps you. Please share the episode and we will see you on the next one.