75. From Hospital Pressure to Thriving at One: Our Son’s First Year Unvaccinated

After a year-long hiatus raising their third child and stepping into homeschooling, Jason and Rachel Wagner are back with a raw, honest update on their unvaccinated son Wes.
In this episode, they share what the first year of life has looked like for their completely unvaccinated son — including tracking every sick day, zero fevers, and how his health has compared to their vaccinated daughters. Jason and Rachel walk through their decision-making process for each vaccine on the standard schedule, the real risks they weighed, and why they ultimately chose to decline them all. They also open up about the pressure they faced in the hospital, the role of faith in their choices, and what it means to truly understand risk versus reward as parents.
Whether you’re a parent questioning the childhood vaccine schedule, curious about natural immunity, or simply want to hear a candid, faith-informed conversation about real-life health decisions, this episode offers transparent insights without judgment. Tune in for an encouraging discussion on trusting God’s design, supporting a child’s immune system, and making informed choices that align with your values.
Listen now and let us know what you think in the comments!

Transcript

Welcome Back And The Hiatus

SPEAKER_04 0:00

We're back, baby. Rachel, it's been a while since I've seen you. I would I would like to personally welcome back welcome you back to our show, the real life investing podcast with Jason and Rachel Wagner. Well, Rachel, welcome back to the show. I feel like I haven't seen you or talked to you in a year.

SPEAKER_03 0:19

Yeah, it does kind of feel like that. But really, I should welcome you back because I did the last episode. So, Jason, it's been a long time. Welcome back to the show.

SPEAKER_04 0:29

Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

unknown 0:31

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

Thanks for setting up too. I always appreciate it when you set up the equipment.

SPEAKER_04 0:36

Oh man. So of all the shows that you wanted to talk about, I mean, I mean, this is like, you know, breaking back into what season three or something. Okay, why why do we take such a big hiatus? Can you maybe go on and explain that?

SPEAKER_03 0:47

Yeah, we had a baby. Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny, I was listening to the last episode that we did together, and it was on our son. And I was eight days postpartum on that episode. I'm like so proud of myself when I listened to me speak because that was like such a blurry time as it is after you have a baby. But, anyways, yeah, we had our third child and we took on homeschool last fall. And so over this last year, we have had at least one child in the house all the time. And that made it very difficult to find uninterrupted time for us to podcast together because when that time did happen, it was after nine o'clock, and we both wanted to go to bed.

SPEAKER_04 1:26

So yeah, there's no way I can podcast at nine o'clock. Yeah. Like it's just not a rare occurrence. I'm tired. Yeah. I'm tired.

SPEAKER_03 1:32

But now we get, you know, a couple hours, a couple days a week where we have time in our house without our because it's summer school.

SPEAKER_04 1:39

It's summer summer school, summer camp season.

SPEAKER_03 1:41

It is summer camp season.

SPEAKER_04 1:43

Woohoo! It's amazing. The house is empty. Yeah. Yeah, it's weird. Oh man. It's so great. So great. I feel like uh growing up, like our parents might make jokes about all this stuff too. Like, oh, the kids are out of the house. And you know, we could just never relate, but now we really can. We really can. All right. So so yeah, okay, let's get into the show. What is it that you wanted to bring up here? This topic is all going to be on uh our son, Wes. I feel like he's he's one years old now. You remember this is the unvaccinated boy. This is the boy that doesn't have a single drop of any foreign substance in his body. Nothing was injected into him, no goo was put over his eyes, you know, and follow-up appointments, no vaccines, no nothing. I actually was telling this to a friend of mine in a phone call conversation, and he's like, you know, dude, I really like your guys' podcast because you guys are just like so open about like, you know, everyday life things. And you know, it's it's helpful to hear. And he's like, but I always thought your son was just like not vaccinated for COVID. And I said, Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. Not vaccinated at all. He's like, So what does that mean? Like, go into that. I'm like, not a single drop. Literally not a single drop. And how many vaccines do children get in their first year?

What Unvaccinated Means For Us

SPEAKER_04 3:05

Do you know the stat off hand?

SPEAKER_03 3:07

Gosh, I want to say it's like 24 or 25 doses.

SPEAKER_04 3:10

In their first year?

SPEAKER_03 3:12

Yeah, I would have to look it up to be sure, but it's a lot. I mean, at birth, you know, you get vitamin K and HEP B within the first 24 hours. Um, and then you start the schedule at two months. You get rotavirus, DTAP. I don't know if you get IPB yet, polio, I don't remember. But yeah, you go two months, four months, six months, nine months, twelve months. That's a big one. It's an insane amount of doses of medicine. So yeah, so so to Jason's point, our 69th episode we did right after our son Wes was born, and we were just sharing what happened to us in the hospital as we turned down all of these newborn protocols that are have been standard in the US for many, many years for most people. The vitamin K, antibiotics for GBS, Rogam if you're RH negative, HEP B, the antibiotic eye cream that they put on babies the second they're born. We declined all of that. And so in our 69th episode, we talk about the experience of doing that, our reasons why. And now, a little over a year later, we thought it was worth doing an episode sharing what this last year with Wes has been like and the outcome of those decisions and how we're looking forward.

SPEAKER_04 4:24

So just to plug this into Grok, real quick, I asked how many vaccines does a child get in their first year of life in the US under the current CEC childhood immunization schedule, which remains in effect as of June 2026. Okay, a child following the routine recommendations typically receives between 20 and 30 individual vaccine doses, injections, or oral by their first birthday, age 12 months, depending on the exact brand's flu season timing and whether certain vaccines like COVID-19 or flu are given. So this is hepatitis B, coronavirus, DTAP, hip, PCV, it's a pneumococcal IPV, RSV, monochal antibody, influenza, COVID-19, and others like MMR.

SPEAKER_03 5:22

Yeah, so that's once you hit 12 months. So 12 months you start getting MMR, Varicella, which is chickenpox, HEPA, it just keeps going.

SPEAKER_04 5:30

Total doses, 20 to 30 range for their first year of life.

SPEAKER_03 5:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:37

Okay. That's a lot. Wow. And so what do we do with our first two children?

SPEAKER_03 5:42

We f we followed that schedule. So our girls got all of those except COVID and RSV because they weren't on the market yet.

SPEAKER_04 5:49

So since Wes was born, is hepatitis B still on that schedule? Or was that like removed?

SPEAKER_03 5:57

No, it's still on the schedule.

SPEAKER_04 5:58

Oh, right. I'm looking at it right now. Right.

SPEAKER_03 6:01

All of all of these are still on the schedule.

SPEAKER_04 6:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 6:03

Nothing has been removed.

SPEAKER_04 6:04

Nothing has been removed. No. But what happened with that ASIP meeting where they recommended removing Hep B? Do you remember that? Aren't Malone?

SPEAKER_03 6:15

I do kind of remember that, but I don't remember an actual change occurring, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:21

Okay. We're just gonna clarify this. I'm just gonna say I thought Hep B was removed. Alright, this is great. Real time.

SPEAKER_03 6:30

This is Jason like in real time, real life, just on GROC all the time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 6:42

But those recommendations have been stayed by federal.

SPEAKER_04 6:48

Wild.

unknown 6:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:50

So it's all the same.

SPEAKER_04 6:51

Yeah. So nothing's changed. Okay. But they've they've encouraged

Risk Assessment Over Fear

SPEAKER_04 6:55

more discussion around this stuff. All right. So let's let's talk about it. Uh let's see. Is our child dying? Is he is he infected with all of these crazy diseases that we're vaccinated against him for?

SPEAKER_03 7:08

No, he's not. And I don't want to be like pompous in this show either about this stuff. Yeah, I want to dial you back because kids can get sick at any time. And I, you know, you know, when we did the last episode, the main, I think, theme around the episode was just understanding your risk. And so that's really what we did with all of these decisions was understand the risk of contracting these infections and then the actual risk of severe illness or death with these infections. And all of this information is available when it doesn't, if you actually go into the data, it doesn't match what is being told in marketing materials or from your physicians. So it's actually really interesting to dig into and happy to recommend books and podcasts if people are interested in that. But that was the theme, right? Is it's it's not that our unvaccinated son couldn't get measles or couldn't get chicken pox. I actually think he's probably pretty likely to get chickenpox at some pock at some point in his life. It's understanding the risk that carries for him, you know? So, no, to answer your question, he is actually thriving. And as we look at our three children, as I mentioned, our first two children were fully vaccinated up until age two. And it's interesting because somebody said something to me who I was talking to is a similar situation where their first couple of children were vaccinated and their younger children were not. It's that, and you hear this in like podcasts and books too, is that most people are not anti-vaxxers. Most people are ex-vaxx vaxxers, where they did vaccinate, they did fully believe in vaccines, which I fullheartedly 100% was so pro-vaccine to the point of when Scarlett was a baby, I would schedule her appointments like right on her two-month birthday, right on her four-month birthday, because I didn't want her to miss another day of not having that protection. Like just total psycho.

SPEAKER_04 8:59

You you also didn't want her to be around anybody who wasn't vaccinated. Who wasn't vaccinated, or if she didn't have her vaccines, you didn't want her to be around people. Like you were Well, I was terrified. You were insane in terms of like when you actually think about what you used to be versus what you are now, is like it's night and day. And it's it's astounding.

SPEAKER_03 9:21

There's a lot of things going on there too. Like I had some postpartum anxiety with Scarlet, and but I think a lot of that was driven by the fear that was placed on me from just being a new mom and what the doctors say, what the news says, and then of course being thrown into a pandemic. But yeah, so I just want to make that point. It's like people who are reaching the point of not vaccinating a child are typically ex-vaxxed vaxxers, they're not anti-vaxxers. There's people who did believe in the system and then saw something go wrong or asked a question and got an answer that didn't make sense, and that's 100% us.

SPEAKER_04 9:51

Yeah. And so, like, real quick, okay. So hepatitis B, what was the risk of actually Wes contracting hepatitis B?

SPEAKER_03 9:59

I don't have a number to it, but most of the time hepatitis B is passed from dirty needles or unprotected sex, and you know, he's a newborn.

SPEAKER_04 10:07

So just like it's like almost impossible for the likelihood is just ridiculously low.

SPEAKER_03 10:14

The likelihood of him contracting, you know, hepatitis B is B is extremely low. Insanely low. It's insanely low.

SPEAKER_04 10:21

So that's a risk we were we were obviously willing to take. What about rotavirus? What what do you think is a risk for contracting rotavirus? Now here's the interesting part. Did we believe that Scarlet had rotavirus?

SPEAKER_03 10:34

Scarlet reacted to the rotavirus vaccine. She reacted to the rotavirus vaccine.

SPEAKER_04 10:40

So the vaccine of rotavirus.

SPEAKER_03 10:47

Yes. So the most common side effect of the rotavirus. So rotavirus is like chronic diarrhea, and the risk of chronic diarrhea, especially to a young baby, is dehydration. And so Scarlett got the rotavirus vaccine at two months, and then she had chronic diarrhea for two weeks and was in the emergency room to get rehydrated. So she got a vaccine to protect her from having chronic diarrhea, and then she got really bad chronic diarrhea for two weeks.

SPEAKER_04 11:12

We told the doctor how many times she had pooped in that day, and what was the number?

SPEAKER_03 11:16

It was in the 30s.

SPEAKER_04 11:18

It was in the 30s.

SPEAKER_03 11:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:19

And this doctor was telling us this pediatrician at the time, she was like, I'm retiring next week. And she's like, I've been doing this for 40 years or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 11:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:28

And she's like, I've never written a number down on a piece of paper of saying that a child has pooped that many times.

SPEAKER_03 11:36

Yeah. And being like new parents, and she was only, you know, two, almost three months old at that point. I was tracking everything. So I had the sprout app, and I'm like, look, look at my app. I literally have every single poop that she's had, you know, marked here. I think they got the description of what it looked like, you know. It was crazy. She was literally the poor thing, squirting out like a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 11:57

We were just like, well, we have we have some experience with this, so we don't want to give that one. Yeah. So let's skip that one. Uh DTAP. What uh let's see. Um, we had somebody say that they were

Rotavirus Experience And DTaP Doubts

SPEAKER_04 12:10

really concerned about protestus. Can you go into like what that would entail?

SPEAKER_03 12:15

I mean, I think partussis is a real concern, right? Like I think the likelihood of Wes contracting protestus at some point is also fairly high, especially among the community that we're in.

SPEAKER_04 12:28

What does that mean? The community that we're in. What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_03 12:31

So we have attended a school where they've had a protest outbreak. And I think that's because a lot of the people that we do go to school with don't vaccinate. And what happened? The whole first grade was out for a week or two with a bad respiratory cough, and then they all got better and they all came back to school. I don't know. Wait, are you wanting to go through each and every one of these? Yeah, kind of.

SPEAKER_04 12:53

Because I want I want you to I mean you're very good at like off the cuff here. Like Rachel didn't prepare for any of this, right? So I'm just I'm good, I'm asking you questions, like as a, you know, another parent would say, well, what like why can't we pick and choose, Rachel? Like, why why didn't you guys pick and choose the process? Well, I think you can't process.

SPEAKER_03 13:11

And I think people like again, uh the last episode we did and this episode too, I think is all about understanding your risk. And so everybody has to make that decision for themselves. If you end up having a child who seems to be prone to respiratory illness or has an underlying factor where they're, you know, have higher like pulmonary risks, then maybe these are things that you need to consider 100%. It's not that, you know, I'm sitting here saying that everybody should not vaccinate, because I don't necessarily know that that's true. But for us, when we look at our risk profile, we fullheartedly believe that our children are at greater risk of obtaining the vaccines than they are at not at this given point, right? Why? Because they were born healthy, healthy pregnancies, healthy child. I knew that my plan was to breastfeed and that, you know, biology is huge protection for the child, especially like if you're nursing, which I am and still am. And so knowing that I had these layers of protection for Wes made me more comfortable. It's not to say that I didn't have moments of fear, because I certainly did. But so far, everything has been fine.

SPEAKER_04 14:20

So, like, okay, so like dip diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. Like, is that like why didn't we get that vaccine?

SPEAKER_03 14:26

Well, because SIDS is listed as a side effect on the package inter that's why I did not get DTAP vaccine.

SPEAKER_04 14:33

Okay. So it it was fascinating to me when I actually read that because for the DTAP vaccine, SIDS is listed as a side effect? Yes. Wow.

unknown 14:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:45

Okay. That's very serious. Isn't that like a black box warning, or what is that? Is what's the difference between those? Do you know?

SPEAKER_03 14:54

I don't think I can technol technically speak to what that is. I know vitamin K has a black box warning on it and that it can cause death. I don't recall.

SPEAKER_04 15:02

That's another one before because vitamin K isn't even on this list.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Well, because they don't consider vitamin K a vaccine.

SPEAKER_04 15:07

Oh, okay. All right. Interesting. All right. So we also decline that part because that's actually the very first injection. Or well, actually, I think it's the very first injection.

SPEAKER_03 15:18

I think vitamin K is the first injection.

SPEAKER_04 15:19

And then I've watched it go into two of my children.

unknown 15:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 15:23

I've watched it. Yeah. That's when they take the baby from the mother to go clean up the baby and they weigh, they measure, and then boom, that's when dad is watching vitamin K go into their child.

SPEAKER_05 15:36

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 15:37

Yeah, it if we're being honest, I would say vitamin K and Rogan were probably the two hardest choices of ones not to get.

SPEAKER_04 15:46

Okay. And so what was the logic behind vitamin K?

SPEAKER_03 15:48

For me, it was a black box warning. And just faith, I think, which is, you know, everybody's gonna have their own opinion on that. But for me, it was like, I don't believe that God made babies born deficient. I, you know, the the whole thing is, oh, babies are deficient in vitamin K and they don't produce enough vitamin K until a certain age. Okay. Well, cord blood also has very rich levels of vitamin K. So if you do delayed cord cord clamping, baby's gonna get a huge infusion of that vitamin K. And if you're breastfeeding, baby's also going to get some vitamin K protection from that. So, do I think that God's design was so flawed that we needed to intervene and give a vitamin? I personally did not. I think knowing that pregnancy was healthy, birth ended up being super low risk, there wasn't any high risk for bleeding, I was very comfortable not choosing vitamin K. And I think I said in our last episode too, like, had the situation been different at birth, like say they needed to use the vacuum or something to get him out, like the risk of intercranial bleeding obviously is significantly greater if you're going through that. So I think in that those instances, like judgment call is different, right? Because your risk level changes, right? But for us, like he was in the birth canal a pretty short period of time. I pushed him out pretty quickly. There wasn't a lot of of trauma or need to fear, you know, the risk of intracranial bleeding.

SPEAKER_04 17:27

Yeah. So well, because you can do vitamin K, which is the injection, or you can do the one that's like the goo, right? That goes over the eyes.

SPEAKER_03 17:34

No, that's something different. That's an antibiotic cream. So there's another option for vitamin K. They offered us this. Oh, it's an oral, right? It's an oral. The hospitals, at least our hospital, they also had a preservative-free vitamin K. It's like newer, it's like their next step sales to try and get you to take it. So that's an option if you are interested in that. And then we know some people who also do oral vitamin K drops. So that is an option too. We didn't do any of that. We we didn't do we didn't do any vitamin K. And I think, you know, you were asking like about risk. Well, both of our two prior children had elevated bellirubin ratings and or jaundice, that's what the bellirubin test is. They both had jaundice. Layla was, you know, fairly, fairly low. Scarlett was a little bit higher. We had to go back and do ex uh extra testing. Wes didn't have any elevated level whatsoever. I I remember that nurse coming in and doing the testing, and you were like watching her super closely, and you asked what the number was, and she told you, and you're like, oh yeah, that's that's pretty good. Nothing there. Yeah, nothing there.

SPEAKER_04 18:34

I again I said in the last episode like no levels of jaundice, like very extreme low levels of jaundice.

SPEAKER_03 18:40

There was nothing. Oh she was totally 100% in the green.

SPEAKER_04 18:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:44

Layla was like borderline

Vitamin K Concerns And Jaundice

SPEAKER_03 18:45

and then Scarlet was in jaundice.

SPEAKER_04 18:46

And so we we believe that the vitamin K actually leads to jaundice, right?

SPEAKER_03 18:53

It says that in the vaccine insert. Oh. Yeah, it says it in that. So it's not a belief.

SPEAKER_05 18:58

It's a vaccine.

SPEAKER_03 18:59

Yeah, it's not a belief that it's actually like a known fact in the insert. So having had that experience with both our daughters, um, and then knowing that there was a black box warning label and seeing the side effects that they, you know, actually experienced, it was pretty easy for us to be like, we're not, we're not gonna do that this time. And the result was he didn't have any elevated birirubin, his levels were all perfectly normal. He had no issue. And I think too, like, again, I'm not a scientist, so I'm not gonna try to be like scientific on this, but just like common sense-wise, as you think about it, it's like this baby is just born and you're gonna inject them right away with a high level of something that's gonna have to go and be processed through their liver, and then to be looking at their liver and be like, oh geez, like they've got weird, like elevated, you know, belirubin numbers is kind of like, well, yeah, you just pump them full of a bunch of crap that they didn't need because you're saying they're deficient. Again, I don't I don't know. For me, it just it it doesn't really add up.

SPEAKER_04 19:52

Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. So what about HIB? I don't I don't even know what HIB is. It's a type of flu, I think. Okay. Yeah. And so not concerned about that one?

SPEAKER_03 20:02

It's not that I'm not concerned about our kid getting sick, right? It's it's that I believe that their immune system is designed to fight off these infections. And especially when, you know, I'm supporting that immune system with with breast milk, I think we should trust the we should trust God's design.

SPEAKER_04 20:21

Do you think that there is a side effect of taking the HID vaccine?

SPEAKER_03 20:25

I don't know that one well enough to say here, but I believe there is a side effect to taking every vaccine. And why do I say that? Is because every vaccine is designed to change the way your body responds and should change the way your immune system is responding to something. That's what it's supposed to do, right? These vaccines, uh I think a misconception is that these vaccines are preventing infection, and majority of them on the schedule are not actually preventing infection, they're preventing disease. So you get exposed, you get infected, but the way your body responds to that infection is what the vaccine is created to do. So it doesn't want to show the symptoms of the infection that your immune would typically do. So it is changing you, right? So let's use chicken pox as an example, right? If you get infected with chicken pox and you're unvaccinated, like both of us, you had chicken pox as a kid, right? Oh yeah. Okay, yeah. So you get infected with chicken pox. Yeah. So you get chicken pox and your immune responses to break out and all these itchy bumps, it totally sucks. You got to wait like two weeks, they scab over, it's highly contagious. Incubation period is like a week, so nobody ever knows where it comes from, right? Like super inconvenient, super annoying, right? You get the chicken pox vaccine. It doesn't stop you from getting infected with chicken pox. You can still get infected with the virus. What changes is your body doesn't respond with the same symptom of disease. So you're not going to break out in all of these itchy spots anymore because it's your immune system has been changed. It's been altered on purpose. So when I like stop and think about that, it's like, We are purposely changing our body's natural immune response to prevent, you know, these symptoms. Which there's a logical reason to want to do that, right? Like we don't want people to have high fever. We don't want people to have encephalitis. We don't want people to be sick for two weeks. Like I get the desire to want to do that, but also saying these vaccines don't cause anything is really stupid because they are designed to cause something. They are designed to change the way your body is reacting. They're designed to change your immune response, your natural immune response. So going back to this, am I afraid of it? Okay, maybe not really, no, because I believe that our bodies were designed to fight off infection and illness. And I believe in modern-day Western medicine. So should our child get infected with whatever, we'll take them to the doctor, we'll look at our options to treat it, and then we'll move on. But do we need to be preventative about all of these things to the point where we're gonna inject them 24 to 30 times in their first year of life? No.

SPEAKER_04 23:03

Literally what you just said there was like perfect. Was perfect because I think there's a lot of people that think like, oh, if they get pertussis, that's it for them. They're done.

SPEAKER_03 23:16

It it's a risk. Like babies who get pertussis as an infant could end up in the hospital because they have a hard time breathing. Yeah, 100% there's a risk. It's the same with RSV, right? You know, again, I think everybody's gotta assess their own risk file profile for us, like but it's treatable. Right? In the majority of cases, it's treatable. Okay. Yes. And what again, what I want to point out is when you're making the decision to not get any of these things that are going to change the immune system or in my thought process, weaken the immune system, your susceptibility to illness actually goes down because you're not constantly pounding that immune system the first year, the first day of life with something that you're trying to alter it, right? So let's think about that. You're giving a baby two shots within the first 24 hours of life that is changing the that's hitting their immune system right away. Those organs are just waking up and you are just gonna pound it, right? And then we're gonna keep doing that every couple months for the first year. So, like that immune system is constantly just getting b, b, b, b, blah, blah, blah, blah. So then in my thought, it's already weakened every time you're exposed to these other infections, right? Versus kid who's not getting any of those is set up for potential success.

SPEAKER_04 24:30

Yeah. So you're saying that you actually might have a stronger immune system without these injections. That's my belief. Okay. Do we have any do we have any proof to show that?

SPEAKER_03 24:43

I I don't think I can say that it's definitive proof because we're not over here doing clinical trial or anything, but our first two kids were vaxxed to the max, as I like to say, vexed to the max. Um, their first two years of life, and they were sick a lot. They had a lot of illness, high fevers. Neither one of them had antibiotics under the age of three. So I will, you know, make that that point out. They were never ill enough to have an antibiotics under the age of three. They've certainly both had their fair share of antibiotics now, thanks to strep throat. But their first year of life, they always had colds, they always had green boogers, they always had high fevers. I was constantly giving them, you know, Motrin or Tylenol, you know, for everything. It was like they were always sick, they were in daycare, so they were, well, Scarlett was in daycare. Layla didn't go to daycare her first year of life. But then you look at our thirdborn, he's never had Tylenol or Motrin because he's never had a fever. He's had a handful of days where he had a runny nose, a cough, and was just irritable. Like you could just tell that he didn't feel good. But aside from that, he went his entire first year of life with no illness, no fever, no need for medicine.

SPEAKER_04 25:56

Zero fever. So I had actually posted on X every single month, you know, kind of tracking his sickness. So, like stuffed up nose or if he had a cough or anything. And so, as a full year of actually tracking this stuff, okay, here's what I say on uh the day before his one-month or one-year birthday. I said, My completely unvaccinated son turns one year old tomorrow. This last month he had two more sick days, runny nose and cough. This brings his total sick days for the year to eleven days. A typical one-year-old, according to Grok, has 42 to 120 sick days. My son had 11. A typical one-year-old will have had at least six to twenty-four days with a fever. My son has never had a fever. Zero days. And then I say, tomorrow we celebrate a beautiful, healthy boy. I was excited.

SPEAKER_03 26:59

And it's interesting seeing those stats too, because you look back at again our first two daughters, they probably easily fell within that 42 to 120 day range of being sick.

Immune System Beliefs And Sick Days

SPEAKER_04 27:10

Totally. Totally. Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_03 27:12

And we've had a couple people make comments so it's about like, well, your son's not in daycare. Okay, let's like use that comparison for sure. Because Scarlett was in daycare at 12 weeks. I was still working, so she went to daycare. So she definitely had more exposure than Wes did. But Layla didn't. Layla didn't go to daycare for the entire first year of her life, and she was still sick.

SPEAKER_04 27:31

Still very sick. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting comment there. Well, you must not have ever taken Wes out of the house.

SPEAKER_03 27:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:40

As a thirdborn, Wes went everywhere.

SPEAKER_03 27:42

He's the one kid that never had a schedule because he always had to come with us. So yeah, he literally came with me probably 80% of the time every time. Drop off, pick up the kids, take them to their activities. And then to go even further, he was, you know, kind of like a world traveler.

SPEAKER_04 27:58

He uh Wait, you brought him on a plane? We brought an unvaccinated boy on a plane. Don't they don't they screen for that?

SPEAKER_03 28:05

At six months old, and in the height of cold and flu season in November, we took him on a plane to then aboard a cruise ship for a week.

SPEAKER_04 28:15

You put him on a cruise ship, which people call petri dishes?

SPEAKER_03 28:18

We did, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:20

You know, yeah, I always love hearing about the cruise stuff because you know that's just where everybody gets sick. That's just uh recirculating airflow and you know, thousands of people just breathing the same air. And he didn't get sick from that, did he?

SPEAKER_03 28:36

Nope. So then we turned around and we booked another trip for December. We went to Dallas. Mm-hmm. We flew him to Dallas right before Christmas. He was on a plane. He was on a plane, yeah. Yeah. And then in April, he was eleven months old. We took him to Florida for a week with a group of what nine kids?

SPEAKER_05 28:54

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 28:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:56

Okay. Well, yeah, he had his fair share of uh being out of the house.

SPEAKER_03 29:00

Yeah, he's definitely out of the house. He definitely traveled. And he's got two older siblings who were out in the midst of all the things, and who got sick. We actually, our entire family got sick, what, the first week of January?

SPEAKER_04 29:11

Oh my gosh. Yes. Because we started the year doing another round of 75 hard, and I think we probably started like January 3rd or 4th. And it was on day eight that we got knocked out because you and I both caught the flu. From the kids. From the kids. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 29:29

The kids, remember? They were throwing up.

SPEAKER_04 29:31

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So it started with Scarlet.

SPEAKER_03 29:33

No, sorry with Layla.

SPEAKER_04 29:34

Okay, it started with Layla. Throwing up.

SPEAKER_03 29:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:38

Awful. Chills.

SPEAKER_03 29:41

She was throwing up in the van next to Wes.

SPEAKER_04 29:44

Oh, yes. Like literally next to him. Well, while you guys were at Scarlett Soccer Practice. Yeah. Yes. Okay. Yes. All right. So it started with Layla. It took, what, three days for her to recover? Two or three days. Yeah, she got hit. Two or three days. And then like as soon as she was good, then Scarlett got it.

SPEAKER_02 30:02

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 30:03

And it was like two or three days. Yep. And then as soon as she was good, you and I got it the exact same day.

SPEAKER_03 30:11

Yeah. Well, and I also want to point out again, as far as Wes exposure goes, like both Wes and Scarlett were in our bed the night Scarlett got sick, and Scarlett threw up in our bed right next to Wes.

SPEAKER_04 30:25

Yep. Yeah. Okay. So the boy is exposed all over all over his top. To this severe flu symptom. I mean, when you and I both got it, we we were debilitated.

SPEAKER_03 30:39

Yeah, and trying to take care of three kids when both that was the first time both of us had ever been knocked out. We've always been staggered.

SPEAKER_04 30:46

Stuck in bed and we couldn't move.

SPEAKER_03 30:49

Yeah, I I know. This is really gross.

SPEAKER_04 30:51

But I remember we had to change the diaper? Yeah. And like we couldn't do it.

SPEAKER_03 30:55

We couldn't stand up. Yeah. We had to change him on the floor, and it was like you were holding one, the wipes of the diaper, whatever, and I was holding the leg. And we were just like passing out, changing this poor kid's diaper. And then I remember crawling up the stairs, being like, We gotta get the bag and play. We're just gonna put him in the bag and play so we could sleep. And thankfully, he was still at an age where like he would kind of play on his own. But that was that was kind of scary. It was honestly scary.

SPEAKER_04 31:19

It was because we had three kids. We had three kids in the house. We were not watching. Two of them were running around, they were feeling great. And both parents are handicapped almost like dead in the bed. And like we could we literally could not move for two days.

SPEAKER_01 31:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:35

All right. So long story short, did Wes get the flu?

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Wes did not get the flu.

SPEAKER_04 31:40

Like, what the fuck? How did he not get the flu? Yeah. Like that is that is absolutely insane. It literally blows my mind just even talking about it. Yeah. Every single person in our family got the flu, and my unvaccinated son did not.

SPEAKER_03 31:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:59

And his exposure level was off the charts. Like what what in the world? Like, literally, what in the world? So um a remarkable, a remarkable test. Praise God for that. That was awesome. Let's see. All right, going back to this list. Did we talk about pneumococcal conjugate? PCV? Did we talk about that one? What's the risk of that one?

SPEAKER_03 32:24

I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 32:25

You don't know. Okay. IPV, polio. Everyone always talks about the polio vaccine.

SPEAKER_03 32:31

Everybody always wants to ask about the polio vaccine.

SPEAKER_04 32:33

Everyone wants to talk about the polio vaccine. Well, what if he gets polio? Like, okay, so let's do you have any defense on this one? Why didn't we get the polio vaccine? You're smiling.

SPEAKER_03 32:43

I am because that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_04 32:44

Because you're about to say something but you don't want to? Oh, okay, tell me.

SPEAKER_03 32:47

Yeah. You know, in all the reading that I have done and looking at the data, I personally don't believe that the most severe symptoms are side effects, and we're talking like paralysis or iron lung type stuff. I no longer believe that those were truly side effects of the polio infection or virus.

SPEAKER_04 33:14

You think it was the DDT stuff?

SPEAKER_03 33:17

I do.

SPEAKER_04 33:18

And what is that again? DDT was like the spraying of chemicals to combat what it was some type of pesticide.

SPEAKER_03 33:26

I don't remember specifically what it was. The the history of polio is very fascinating. I don't feel like I have like a complete 100% handle on all of it because it has such a long history. But the pattern and outbreaks of polio are are very uh erratic and bizarre. But the latest one, the one that everybody kind of remembers, the like 30s and 40s, I believe, was also around the time of DDT when they were doing like intense spraying in cities and in the barracks,

Daycare Comparisons And Real Exposure

SPEAKER_03 33:55

like which uh polio was certainly running through um military bases. And that was also true, like of bases that were in other countries where like the local country people were not getting polio, but if our service people were in the barracks in that region. Um, so just a lot of bizarre stuff. I don't want to go down like the whole rabbit hole, but I personally don't believe that the worst side effects of polio were actually true side effects of polio.

SPEAKER_04 34:21

Fascinating, fascinating. How'd you learn all that? Books. Which book?

SPEAKER_03 34:25

Podcasts. Turtles All the Way Down was the first one. The next one, I'm reading Vaccines Amen by Aaron Seary. I also listened to what was that lady's name, who's on Joe Brogan? Humphries. Humphries. Yeah, Humphreys. Susan Humphreys. Susan Humphreys, yeah, yeah, yeah. They go through like just historical data about it, and it's it it just raises enough questions to where I don't feel as concerned.

SPEAKER_04 34:48

Yeah. Okay. So how about RSV? That one sounds very serious.

SPEAKER_03 34:52

Yeah, RSV used to scare the crap out of me. And I would say it still does. I certainly you don't want your kids to get RSV. You don't want your kids to get any illness, right? Young babies and toddlers definitely have high risk of side effects of those respiratory infections where you know they're gonna have a hard time breathing, need to go to the hospital. We know people who've had to do that, right? But I will say of the people that I know who got in the very small pool sample size, but the few people that I do know who got that vaccine when they were pregnant had kids who were really suffering suffering exaggeration, who struggled with respiratory illness when they were born.

SPEAKER_04 35:32

So this is given to the mother?

SPEAKER_03 35:35

Yeah, when you're pregnant. I can't remember if they gave it to the babies now, but it's one that you get while you're pregnant.

SPEAKER_04 35:40

It says often one dose in the first year timing depends on maternal vaccination status and season for infants eight to nineteen months in some cases.

SPEAKER_03 35:47

Oh, so eight to nineteen months. So yeah, they are given it to babies, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:49

Yeah. Okay. Uh influenza. Interesting. We passed on influenza. You would you would think you would think that the flu that we had, maybe it was influenza, right? Our flu story. You would think that oh, the reason Wes didn't get it is because he got the flu vaccine.

SPEAKER_03 36:12

Well, I didn't. No, but you're not. Yeah, but I also I also don't think, in fairness, I don't think the flu vaccine is is covering the gastritis, the like gastrointestinal flu.

SPEAKER_04 36:23

I might be totally wrong there.

SPEAKER_03 36:24

Yeah, I think the flu vaccine is actually covering your respiratory flu A flu B.

SPEAKER_04 36:28

Gotcha. Okay. All right. Thank you. See, this is why we balance each other out. I'm just presenting what the layman or average person would think about these things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:39

Pretty sure the flu shot is actually for the respiratory flu, not for Okay.

SPEAKER_04 36:43

Cool. Uh COVID-19. Let's talk about that one.

SPEAKER_03 36:46

Do we need to?

SPEAKER_04 36:47

No, no. That's you shouldn't have even personally gotten that vaccine. Um, many, many, many, many, many people did. That was the biggest lie of our lifetime.

SPEAKER_03 36:55

Yeah, we did not get it. Our children did not get it.

SPEAKER_04 36:57

I will never ever give that to a child. And it's it's really disheartening that they still give it to children. Honestly, it's dangerous. It's extremely dangerous. I don't say that lightly. All right. MMR. So that would be coming up, right? Probably in his start at one year. So we would really start the MMR vaccines right now. Um, chickenpox, HEP A. Um, why would we uh not want to do that? Aren't you scared of measles, mumps, or rubella?

SPEAKER_03 37:26

I am more afraid of the side effects of the vaccine and cephalitis. And actually, it's interesting. I've been reading a lot of things about uh statistics. We were just talking about this the other day. Statistically, people who uh got measles and mumps naturally have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer.

SPEAKER_04 37:44

Oh, people that that contracted measles?

SPEAKER_03 37:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 37:49

Have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. That's wild. How about that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:56

Could it could just be a weird correlation and not a causation, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:01

Yeah. Okay. Well, that was that was his first year of life. And that's all the uh vaccine doses that we just went through. Is there anything else that I missed?

SPEAKER_03 38:11

Well, I think no, I don't think he missed any vaccines. I think when we look back at like the pregnancy and the birth stuff, like all the fear that was around, you know, not getting rogam, you know, I was gonna get sensitized.

SPEAKER_04 38:22

Let's talk about let's talk about that because you were pressured into extremely pressured into go back to our episode. It was episode 69, where we are in real time kind of talking about what just happened with the birth of our son. And we were still very fresh with the the pressure that was coming from the hospital staff, the doctors, the nurses, the nurse practitioners, and like the actual doctor. Like they they pushed this stuff on you and they actually showed us the risk. They showed us the calculation. And then I was glad that they did that because once they did show the calculation, I was like, hmm, it's not very high.

SPEAKER_03 38:57

Yeah, that was the GBS. The GB, the pediatric doctor came in and pulled up a chair to sit down and talk with Jason, and she pulled up the chart, and the risk was like half a percent to two and a half percent.

SPEAKER_04 39:08

Yeah, I was like, wow, I I you know that sounds like good odds to me. So I'll take that one.

SPEAKER_03 39:13

Yeah.

unknown 39:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:14

But then the follow-up with the Rogan we had shared, like, okay, they tested me right after birth, and I wasn't sensitized, even though there was like such a hype that that was gonna happen.

SPEAKER_04 39:23

Okay, so but hold on, talk about what that means. So they gave you Rogam for what reason and what is it?

SPEAKER_03 39:29

Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So because I have a negative blood type, I'm a negative, and you as a father have a positive blood type, our chances of having a baby with a positive blood type are pretty high. And in this case, Wes was a positive blood type. We knew that in advance because I tested. It's actually an interesting story if you go back to that episode and listen to it. But what ha what can happen is if the baby's blood in any way enters the mother's bloodstream, the mother, the mother's immune system can then attack the baby as like a foreign whatever, because it doesn't have the right Rh factor. It's very rare, but can happen. Our risk as compatibility was 16%. So it wasn't, you know, totally not possible. It totally could happen. But if you do become sensitized, the risk is actually to a subsequent pregnancy. So Wes, being pregnant with Wes at that time was not at risk, or like very rarely unlikely to be at risk. It was all about if you're gonna have another baby. And so what I kept saying was, okay, well, this is our third child. We don't even know if we want another baby, but we'll just test me after Wes, and that can be a determining factor. If we determine that I am sensitized, then I guess Jason and I'll just be like, okay, well, we're not gonna take the risk of having, you know, my body attack, a potential new pregnancy. We just won't, we just won't have another baby. But we don't even know if I'm sensitized yet. So why is there like so much hype around this? They were so, so intense about rogue. And I go into more detail in that in the other episode. I don't need to do that again. But ultimately, I wasn't sensitized at birth. They tested me right after. And I went back for my six-week appointment and I still am not sensitized. It didn't happen. I didn't get rogue, I'm totally fine. And I think if we ever decide to have another baby before we start trying, I would go back and get tested one more time just to be sure. But as of now, it appears as though.

SPEAKER_04 41:17

So you fell within the eighty you fell within the 84% of not being sensitized.

SPEAKER_03 41:22

I did. And that risk profile is less for people of different, you know, blood type compatibilities or whatever. But yeah. Yeah. So there's that. And then obviously GBS declined the antibiotics. I didn't pass it to Wes. He didn't get sick. He's totally fine.

SPEAKER_04 41:39

So the worst case scenarios did not happen.

SPEAKER_03 41:42

They did not happen.

SPEAKER_04 41:43

No. Okay. That's good to know.

SPEAKER_03 41:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 41:47

That's good to know.

SPEAKER_03 41:48

Yeah, we declined, declined at all, and he is okay.

SPEAKER_04 41:53

Did you feel uh talking about your your psyche going through this last year where you at what point I'm assuming new parent, especially first-time parent, maybe

Polio Questions RSV And COVID Stance

SPEAKER_04 42:05

going against the grain of these recommendations and just the fear that is one put in your face when you're making these decisions, and you have to say no, and you know you're not just saying no, and they're like, okay. They're like, You have to say no ten times. And you have to be willing to show that you have some type of mental capacity to think about this, right?

SPEAKER_03 42:30

Oh, yeah. Well, you have to have the strength to keep saying no in the face of them telling you how stupid it is. And like point blank, and I'm sure every physician's different, but like he literally said to us, This is a stupid decision. You're not gonna find a pediatrician to support this whatsoever, which wasn't true. Oh, that's another thing, right? But I mean, he very blatantly told us how stupid we were being and would say things like, Why would you want your baby to suffer?

SPEAKER_04 42:55

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:57

I I don't.

SPEAKER_04 42:58

Yeah, he said some pretty, pretty awful things to us.

SPEAKER_03 43:00

While I was in labor.

SPEAKER_04 43:02

Right. Yeah. And that that is also another big concern, is that, well, if you're not vaccinated, I can't just go to any doctor. Which is true. Which is true.

SPEAKER_03 43:13

You can yeah, you can't just go to any doctor and you can't just go to any doctor in school.

SPEAKER_04 43:17

Yeah. Um so you have to figure out how to do it all. And so how do you do it all? Like, I think that's the biggest concern is that a lot of people have is that, you know, there's the I I know actually a number of people who they were going to a doctor, they refused the vaccines, and then they got a letter that said, We are no longer going to treat you.

SPEAKER_03 43:37

Yeah.

unknown 43:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:38

That's a very real thing.

SPEAKER_04 43:39

Like, how how shitty is that of the healthcare system to do that to this family that doesn't want to subject their child to all of the uh you know symptoms that could come from vaccination? And they say, Okay, yeah, well, we don't care about you anymore. See ya, go find somebody else. So That's a thing. And so how do you how do you defend against that? Well, I guess you go to places like well-rooted, places like Eisenstein Clinic. And what what what would you call those? Like those are holistic, what do you call those? They're run by nurse practitioners, not run by like Hell Me Otter.

SPEAKER_03 44:17

Well-rooted is a little more holistic, but functional medicine. They've got a pediatric side and then they've got a functional health side. I don't know what I would call Eisenstein Clinic exactly. They're a little more holistic, but they're not quite functional medicine, but they don't they don't do vaccines at all. I know there's a Thrive Pediatrics in Elgin that has been named to be friendly.

SPEAKER_04 44:38

Yeah, so you can look up. Here's a here's a great here's a great analogy. So in the real estate world, when you're on the real estate investing side, you're always looking for, hey, does anyone have a an investor-friendly real estate agent?

SPEAKER_02 44:53

That's a great analogy.

SPEAKER_04 44:54

Or an investor-friendly lender.

SPEAKER_02 44:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:57

Like, and those are people that work specifically with real estate investors that can talk the language of real estate investors, understand the goals of real estate investors. And so now just replace real estate agent with investor or no, a vaccine-friendly person.

SPEAKER_03 45:19

Yeah, it's so funny you say that because that actually people literally will comment in like the neighborhood mom groups and be like, hey, looking for recommendations for a delayed schedule-friendly provider or, you know, no vex, you know, it literally I say this all the time. They're posted anonymously. But I will say, like, it's definitely harder as a first-time parent, I would say 100%, because you just, you just, there's so much you don't know yet, and you're just experiencing it's your like it's so scary being a first-time parent. But it's a lot easier now because the conversation isn't as taboo as it was a few years ago. It is being talked about way more openly, and um, providers are probably more expecting of these conversations. My suspicion would be that your best bet in finding somebody would be somebody who's not a big box provider, but has their own private practice and they're not as controlled by, you know, the endeavors, the advocates, the Northwest, whatever, Northwestern, whatever. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:14

Yeah. I keep seeing on X, you know, that it's gonna be like NBC reports that measles is at the highest level it's ever been in recent history.

SPEAKER_03 46:27

Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:28

You know, it's they the media seems to push out these articles and was there a measles death that was like there was like one measles death that they were trying to pin out of measles, but actually wasn't measles.

SPEAKER_03 46:41

Yeah, I think there's been a couple, but the first one that happened, the family actually ended up getting interviewed and they're like, She didn't die from measles. She actually recovered from measles and then got this other infection that they treated inappropriately. It was like malpractice.

SPEAKER_04 46:53

So it was actually, yeah, doctor.

SPEAKER_03 46:55

But the mainstream media was reporting it as a a measles death, but literally her parents were like, She didn't die for measles.

SPEAKER_04 47:01

Yeah, how about that? Yeah, so there's there's a narrative spin that's out there. For sure. So yeah, you know, you look, you make these dis you make this decision, you're gonna get attacked, you're gonna get you're gonna get eyes. And but you just it just let it bounce off. Yeah, boom, just boom, boom, boom. And then you say, well, the results speak for themselves. And so it's like, well, I look at my son and I'm like, wow, he was only sick for 11 days. He never had a fever. That doesn't even compare to my other two children. And then you look up, well, how does that compare to an average person? Maybe my other two children were just like off the off the road, you know. Maybe they were, I don't know, maybe there's something really wrong with them. How does it compare to the average person? Well, then you look that up and you're like, oh shit, he's he's outperforming.

SPEAKER_03 47:45

Well, it's interesting too, because as I mentioned, like most people who are choosing not to vaccinate a child are actually ex-vaxxers, they're not anti-vaxxers. All of those families, I've talked to several of these families now. All of these families will tell you the same thing that their unvaccinated child is by far their healthiest child. We've had so many people message us and be like, my kid's five, they've literally never been sick. Like, literally. Yeah. So it's it's it's interesting. As you start talking to people, you start realizing that.

SPEAKER_04 48:12

Yeah, it's not it's not just Wes. It is literally not just Wes. It's a common thing amongst the unvaccinated crowd, is that they are just healthier. They don't get sick of them.

SPEAKER_03 48:25

There's a book, it's called Vax on Vax, the RFK book in Brian Hooker. Is that his name? It's not even like a read. It's literally just like a big book of all these um statistics of vaccine vax. It's just looking at kids who had vaccinations versus kids who didn't, and looking at allergies, autoimmune, illness, life expectancy, cancers, all these things. Like it's just data, just charts of data.

SPEAKER_04 48:50

It's great. That's great. That's what I need.

SPEAKER_03 48:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:53

Yeah. I think after I saw that book, I was like, yeah, this is a no-brainer.

SPEAKER_03 48:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:57

You know, it it it helps you. It helps you because if if people have actually looked at that stuff, it helps you make these decisions.

SPEAKER_03 49:04

Well, and I think that's it. Like, as you were saying, like you gotta let these things bounce off of you. I I would actually say, like, if you don't know, do nothing. That's like Jason's thing of like, if you don't know, just pause. Like it just you can't undo a vaccine once you give it, right? But you can always choose later to get one.

SPEAKER_04 49:20

So Yeah, say that again say that again. You cannot undo a vaccine. You whatever issue that may occur, and maybe it's an allergy. Right?

SPEAKER_03 49:33

Or an autoimmune.

SPEAKER_04 49:34

Or an autoimmune.

SPEAKER_00 49:36

Or cancer.

SPEAKER_04 49:37

Or cancer. Or something. Whatever it is, we can't undo it. So these are very, very, very critical decisions. And to put it on new parents that are young 20s, shit. Heavy stuff. Yeah. So you were going deeper on that.

SPEAKER_03 49:57

Well, yeah, I was just gonna say you said let it bounce off you. Like I I I think actually the best way to equip yourself is to just have read it. Read read the inserts, look at the statistics. There's so many resources out there that will help guide you in how to do that. And then you feel equipped with data because there's a point in our episode of 69 where I was talking about GBS with the doctor, with the Pediatric Doctor who came in and sat down. And I gave her all of my reasons why. And she said to me, I don't disagree with anything that you just said.

MMR RhoGAM GBS And Outcomes

SPEAKER_03 50:31

Do you remember that? Yeah, I do. Yeah. And I was like, okay. And she's like, well, but from the hospital's perspective, like liability-wise, we we want to have you covered. Like liability-wise, like we're talking half to two and a half percent. And you're like, give me all this.

SPEAKER_04 50:44

Like it always comes down to moral. It comes down to moral moral hazard. Moral hazard.

SPEAKER_03 50:51

Yes. Yes. It we're just so heavy on your own.

SPEAKER_04 50:53

Doing it for your neighbor. You're doing it for your neighbor. Yeah. Okay. Anyways. Yeah, it's not for your own child. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:01

So I just feel equipped where you really feel confident in the decisions that you're making. It takes time.

SPEAKER_04 51:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:08

I think that's the hardest thing, too, is like finding the time to dig into some of this stuff is not a good thing.

SPEAKER_04 51:13

Well, the only reason that you had that is that because you were a stay-at-home. Because I left my job. Because you left your job. You had a lot more. We had jumped on 75 Hard, and you know, you chose those vaccine books as the books that you were going to read. And it forced you every single day to read through 10 pages of very heavy vaccine theory. Kind of.

unknown 51:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:39

Why is that a kind of?

SPEAKER_03 51:40

Oh, because I didn't read those books the first the first year of 75 Hard. I actually started out with I didn't read any vaccine books that early.

SPEAKER_04 51:48

Yeah, no, not not I'm not talking about the first time. I mean we've done 75 Heart a number of times.

SPEAKER_03 51:52

I see. I see. Yes, yes, yes. Later. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:54

Yeah. That was like our third time doing it or second time for you or whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:58

Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 52:01

Yeah, we completed a another round of 75 Hard. Yeah, we mean.

SPEAKER_03 52:04

Even after that flu.

SPEAKER_04 52:06

So this year it was, yeah. Yeah. So after that flu, I restarted. And so that was my fourth completion of 75 Days. You know, I think it's great. I thought, you know, just doing it at the beginning of the year is so good. It sets you up for just a lot of good stuff. You know, you're fit, you're feeling good. You get now we're in like pool season. I can take my shirt off. And I'm like, yeah, let's go. That's good. You know, and now you're you're actually in uh phase one. You're you're going above and beyond right now. You're yeah, you just jumped into phase one. Have you completed it three times or four times?

SPEAKER_03 52:37

I did it three times. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:38

I didn't do it the one year with you. Okay. All right. So I got one up on you, but you're you're on phase one, which is uh you're bringing in the cold showers. So you're doing the cold showers. Yeah, oh my god, cold showers.

SPEAKER_03 52:49

It's so funny because I loved the cold showers when we did it the first time. I swear this house has colder water than our house in the city had. It absolutely does. The cold showers in the city did not feel like the cold showers here. The cold showers suck. Yeah, the cold, I mean, again, once you get past the 90 seconds, it gets better, but it it it hurts.

SPEAKER_04 53:09

Yeah, so you're doing 30 days of five-minute cold showers.

SPEAKER_03 53:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:12

Yeah, nice.

SPEAKER_03 53:13

I only got 21 more days though.

SPEAKER_04 53:14

Let's go.

SPEAKER_03 53:15

Yeah, almost done. Sweet. Almost done.

SPEAKER_04 53:19

All right. Yeah. Should we wrap? I mean, I feel like that was a pretty good welcome back episode.

SPEAKER_03 53:24

It was very hard-hitting.

SPEAKER_04 53:25

Very hard-hitting. Yeah, yeah. You know, vaccines of all the things to talk about, vaccines. You know, I had a guy. I had a friend of mine. He's like, Jason, how can you wake up every single day and talk about vaccines? I'm like, I I don't know, man. I don't know. There's just something in me. There's just uh it's like I got a it's like I got a chip on my shoulder. I just got something to prove. And then here we go. We've got a son who's just, you know, the poster boy. He's the golden boy. He's the what do we call him? Uh sweetie boy. Well, he's a sweetie boy, of course. But no, he's the pureblood. Oh, that's what you call him. I mean, he's a pureblood. He's got nothing in him besides mama's milk. It's like insane. It's so great.

SPEAKER_03 54:03

Well, now he's got food, but yeah, mama's milk.

SPEAKER_04 54:05

Mama's milk. I mean, but let's also talk about that because like you, you on this go-around, like he's our third child, and we're actually doing things wildly differently on our third child than we did our second, our first two. Okay. So you are exclusively nursing. Like you didn't really nurse much with the first two kids, right? You just pumped.

SPEAKER_03 54:23

Yeah, no, I pretty much just nursed in the hospital with Scarlet and then exclusively pumped with Layla.

SPEAKER_04 54:28

I was able to contribute in terms of their feeding and whatnot. I don't do shit now. Like, you know, it's because it's obviously I can't. I cannot, I cannot nurse my child. I'm sorry. I just can't, I can't. I'm a man. It doesn't actually work. I've never even tried. I would never want to try. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:45

So a couple things we did differently this time around. So, like with both the girls, I started them on oatmeal at like four months because they were hungry, and that was like the recommendation. And then I started Puree. So at four months old, they were both getting they they supplemented with Formula Two. West, I didn't do that at all, exclusively breastfed. But I didn't give that boy anything until he was almost seven months old and he was very hungry. Like he was very ready to start eating food. But I was committed to nursing because functional medicine had recommended no grains, no dairy prior to six months old. That was wildly different than at four months old giving our girls oatmeal and starting the grains right away. Wes actually still hasn't had dairy or much grain. He's gotten a little bit of gluten-free fruit bars that are really clean, but I haven't given him like a Cheerios.

SPEAKER_04 55:37

I have I have a very big question for you because you know Scarlett has a ton of allergies, and we really need to test Layla and figure out if she has any allergies. We haven't done that yet.

SPEAKER_03 55:46

But Scarlet is She hasn't had outward symptoms.

SPEAKER_04 55:48

So Yeah, she hasn't had uh outward symptoms. So but Scarlett Scarlett is very, very allergic to eggs, which can be anaphylactic for her, but then she has intolerances to wheat, dairy, gluten, which is part of wheat. Um what else? Is that it?

SPEAKER_03 56:04

Um so her panel shows up as other things, like almond has shown up, sunflowers showed up, which that one actually dropped off. So like a couple other like random small things that flared up, but that was attributed to some other things that she had going on too. So that's a whole that's a whole other episode.

SPEAKER_04 56:22

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 56:23

But yeah, she's she's she's got the allergies.

SPEAKER_04 56:25

So we really have to watch, you know, what what Scarlet eats, and she's very gluten-free. And to find things that are gluten-free, dairy-free, are it's very it's hard. It's extremely hard.

SPEAKER_03 56:35

Well, the combo. Like you can find things that are gluten-free, you can find things that are dairy-free, you can find things that are vegan. To find all three is the challenge. Gluten-free and egg-free is a challenge, because if you want a gluten-free crust, more than likely it's gonna have egg as it's and so we're under the mindset that these allergies came from these vaccines, right?

SPEAKER_01 56:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 56:55

Okay. Do we know which one?

SPEAKER_01 56:57

No. Don't know for sure.

SPEAKER_04 57:00

Okay. Probably MMR, but probably MMR.

SPEAKER_03 57:05

Oh, that one I don't know for sure, right?

SPEAKER_04 57:10

Probably the damn MMR.

SPEAKER_03 57:12

But I think one of them has egg protein in it. I do not remember which one, so I can't speak definitively here, but given timing of when she started having symptoms, because she wasn't always allergic to eggs.

SPEAKER_04 57:24

Oh, because she was eating eggs in her first year of life, wasn't she?

SPEAKER_03 57:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 57:27

Yeah, she was. Yeah. And she wasn't anaphylactic then. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:30

No.

SPEAKER_04 57:31

Yeah. Okay. So when you start to put the pieces together, mmm.

unknown 57:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 57:36

It's now it's always interesting. You'll come across like adults that are like,

Hospital Pressure And Finding Providers

SPEAKER_04 57:40

Yeah, I'm all of a sudden allergic to that is so common.

SPEAKER_03 57:45

People are all of a sudden allergic to gluten, all of a sudden allergic to dairy, all of a sudden allergic to meat sometimes. Oh, I'm all of a sudden allergic to egg, or I oh yeah, I all of a sudden have this autoimmune, and it's like, you mean you went your whole life without it?

SPEAKER_04 57:58

Yeah, what changed?

SPEAKER_03 57:59

What changed?

SPEAKER_04 58:00

What'd you do to your body?

SPEAKER_03 58:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 58:02

What shot did you get? Yeah. I don't know. I would ask that question because that's what we kind of think is potentially causing some of these allergies. Now, and then you're gonna be like, well, Jason, don't you think that what happens if Wes is allergic to something? He's not vaccinated. I guess I would have to walk and do it. Am I walking? If if if we find out that Wes is allergic to eggs, what does that mean?

SPEAKER_03 58:27

I think it means that there's I think we already know there's likely a predisposition for Scarlet for that to exist. But is that what her natural chemistry would have been had we not altered her immune system? I don't think so because she wasn't allergic to originally. And this is the funny thing, too, is they always say, oh, you know, kids will grow out of it. And what I have learned about this is are they growing out of it or is their body healing from you stopping vaccines after this age, right? Because like it's it's such a heightened period of injections that you're giving them. Like that was just the first year of life, but like let's go all the way to four. After four, there's a pretty significant drop-off of injections, and that's when they typically say, Oh, after that, they'll kind of start growing out of things. It's like, well, maybe they're not growing out of it. Maybe their body's just healing because you're not pounding it with all this crap all the time.

SPEAKER_04 59:13

But I don't think I've ever actually heard that comment.

SPEAKER_03 59:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 59:17

That's an interesting one.

SPEAKER_03 59:18

Well, because that's what people have said, oh, she'll probably grow out of the egg allergy. And she's still she still may grow out of it. Um, I think we're kind of reaching a point where it's looking like that is going to be a lot harder, but we're doing what we can to heal her body. You're asking about Wes. So, do I think that there is a certainly a possibility of a predisposition to be there? And should he come out with an allergy, my suspicion would be that there was some type of environmental factor that triggered that in his body, that we would there's some type of underlying factor. So that's not to go to him, but I always want to go in these weeds. But with Scarlet, what as I was saying, there's other things that popped up on her panel. Those other things that popped up on her panel weren't actually a true allergy, they were results of other things happening in her body. Um, so she was fighting a lot of underlying infections, which I'm not gonna go into those details. She also had leaky gut. So those things allow those proteins to leak through your gut and absorb into the bloodstream and then trigger the immune system. And so it's not actually an allergy, it's just that there's something biologically happening within your body that isn't working properly that is causing immune reactions. So going back to your question, it's super unlikely. If it were to happen, my guess is there would be some other type of environmental exposure or something else happening within his body. But TBD. We'll see. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:33

Well, I guess we will eventually find out. And we'll let you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:38

He he's had eggs.

unknown 1:00:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:40

He has had eggs. So did Scarlett.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:44

So did Scarlett. Yeah. So we'll wait. We'll wait and see. All right. See what happens.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:48

Yeah, I guess we'll keep you updated. We'll let you know how his uh how his health remains for the next uh next year. We'll do another follow-up episode. Just gonna follow up every every year until we don't even need to because you're just out there on the show.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:04

He's gonna be 25.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:04

He's gonna be 25, and we're still gonna be doing follow-up episodes.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:09

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:11

Oh my gosh. Yeah. So we had like a couple new babysitters that came in over this last year, um, because ours have like gone and graduated or whatever. And one of them felt so bad with this girl.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:22

But the first time Jason's meeting her, he's like, Yep, this is our this is our pride and joy, our son, our unvaccinated pure blood.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:30

I was like, what are you doing? You're just sharing with the world, that is or what this girl is unvaccinated.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:36

She was like, Oh, we have a podcast that we've already said this to whoever is listening to it, but I think it's okay if I tell the babysitter.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:45

I know. It's just you like introduce him as the pure blood, the unvacker. I'm like, oh my god. Yeah, I I don't do that.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:52

Yeah, I'm proud of that boy. I'm proud of that boy. I'm proud of all our children. I love our children. Our children are the best. Oh, yeah. They're amazing. There's nothing better than kids. Yeah. There's nothing better than making the right decisions for your kids. And sometimes a lot of these decisions are very hard and uh, you know, they put a lot of stress on you. Ton of stress. Oh my God, a lot of freaking stress.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:10

Yeah. And you're obviously gonna make mistakes like we do.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:12

Yeah, nobody's nobody's perfect. You can't get this right. I mean, we could be totally wrong. We could be totally wrong. But so far, we really like the results of what has happened, and I will continue to run with it. And, you know, if we have a fourth child, I would say that I'm probably not gonna vaccinate my fourth child. I'm just because the third, the third child's results has just gone tremendously well. I mean, why why would I why would I deviate from things that work? From clearly something that has worked and has worked in our favor, and it's it's only benefited him, and he is living a beautifully healthy life.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:49

Yeah, and he's just he's very good.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:51

So would you do it again, Jason? Would you do it again? Absolutely, I'm gonna do it again. Absolutely, I'm gonna do it again. So take that for what it's worth. Maybe you think we're crazy. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. But that's okay. That's okay. It just bounces right up. All right. Well, what's your big takeaway from this?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:12

A big takeaway? Again, I think it all comes down to truly understanding your risk and not taking what these salespeople are saying at face value. Because at the end of the day, they are trying to sell a product, they being, you know, a whole layer of medical professional. I don't think most people are actually out there trying to harm kids. I think they believe that what they are recommending is true because they have taken the marketing at face value. But I would urge anybody to spend time and investigate all products, not just vaccine, but all things you put honor in your body, especially for your young, young, newborn children, before doing it. Make sure you really understand what's in there and why you're doing it and what's the actual risk of not doing it, and uh what's the risk of doing it, and then weigh those two things and decide what's right for you.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:00

That's that's really great. And that's really, really good advice. My big takeaway here is just the results kind of speak for themselves. I think um we don't we really don't know a ton of people who have been open about sharing their whole vaccine

Breastfeeding Solids And Allergy Fears

SPEAKER_04 1:04:15

experience. And so sometimes I kind of felt like we were we were like the you know, the trailblazers within our own little group, right? Within our own little peer group. Like, oh shit, we're the we're the science experiment, right? That's what it felt like to me. Because I didn't really have at an arm's length in my book, somebody that I was like, yeah, you made the right decision, and like we're gonna do the exact same thing because I trust your judgment. I didn't really have that person. Maybe you did.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:50

Yeah, I would say I've definitely talked to a lot of people, but I would say I think I only know of one other child who is 100% unvaccinated, like ours, among the people that I know who are choosing not to vaccinate, because most people still chose to do like vitamin K. Most m most of the people I know who are not vaccinated, vaccinated anymore chose to do vitamin K or they started it and then stopped at two months or whatever. I think I can only think of one other child that I know 100% doesn't have anything. And that child is thriving.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:23

Yeah. Yeah. And so uh there's not there's not a huge there's not a huge sample size to be like, yeah, this is the right choice. And and so was the risk greater for us. Yeah, I think uh it obviously was. But we dove into understanding what the risks were. But like our risk of making that decision was actually quite high. You know what I mean? Because we didn't have Oh Sally down the street did this too. And like, oh yeah, and they did, oh yeah, and then you know, and them and them, and you know, the Joneses. Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:58

But that's why I say we don't have we don't have that.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:01

Yeah. That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:02

That's what I'm saying. Is that the actual risk of us going unvaccinated was not as high as what they make it seem.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:11

You put a lot of faith in me and my research.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:14

Well, sure, but I yeah, but I yeah, I mean, you were you were my my guiding light here. But as you I mean, as it all uncovered here, like again, the actual risk of being unvaccinated is not as high as what they will tell you. The risk of us making the decision was high. And that risk, I think, is really more just societal risk. Right? Perception, perception risk. And I think ultimately, as more and more people hear these types of stories and feel can connect with it, and that societal risk will actually lower.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:54

I think it has. Yeah. Yeah. I the the number of people who come to us now and and ask questions or share things has just blown up. I mean, it's

Takeaways And Closing Request

SPEAKER_03 1:07:05

it's not as taboo, I think for sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:08

So yeah, so results speak for themselves. I think that's that's my takeaway. All right, well, awesome. Well, thank you for tuning in to the newest episode of the Real Life Investing podcast. If you found some value in the show, please share it. And we are going to continue our summer season when the kids are out of the house. I mean, it's great. We got we got three days a week where the kids are out of the house. We'll try to, you know, pump out an episode once a week. And yeah, it's gonna be awesome. I can't wait.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:37

Yeah, I do.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:38

All right. All right, so we'll catch you on the next episode.