Max Collins details home birth experience, shares video clips in latest vlog

Max Collins has detailed her home birth experience, sharing videos taken during the event in her latest vlog post.

The actress narrated every step of what happened from her labor at home until she welcomed her first child, Skye Anakin, on July 6.

“So this is where it all began. At 3:30 am, I woke up and I had to use the bathroom,” Max narrated on the vlog, showing the areas where she stayed while she was in labor.

“So, I felt that something was different and that’s when my contraction started. I started pooping at 3:30 then I started getting contractions,” she said.

The Kapuso actress said she monitored her contractions through an app and when it told her that it was time to go to the hospital, she slightly panicked.

“And that’s when I started slightly panicking and my husband started everything getting ready, so he inflated the pool, right here,” Max said, showing the spot where they put the inflatable pool inside their room.

“And he filled it up with water,” she continued. “He tried to make the room very spa-like with candles, and a diffuser, and just make it all really nice.”

Max said the one thing they forgot was to get blinds that give more cover, “so it was so, so bright and I was really uncomfortable so I ended up having contractions, painful contractions, and wanting to hide.”

She said she decided to step inside their walk-in closet and then into their bathroom where her water broke.

“The floor was like all wet and yeah, I was just crawling basically, and at that time, my doula and my midwife were already here and my midwife checked on me and said I was fully dilated,” she narrated in the video.

By that time, Max said husband Pancho Magno was already massaging her tailbone to ease and counter the pain, “it was so so red already and it was just like, basically I want him to crack my tailbone for me because of the pain.”

Max said there came a point when she lost all her energy because she kept puking. “I just kept thinking to myself like, this too shall pass, every time the contractions came, I would tell myself that I could do it and I tried not to panic.”

To replenish her energy, Pancho gave her some frozen blueberries during the labor, “that honestly really helped me have that extra boost to keep pushing.”

When she wasn’t feeling comfortable inside the inflatable pool, she was asked to stand up and that was the time they saw the head of Skye.

She was then asked to squat while her back rested on her husband Pancho. “And they found that to be the best position to get Skye out, and I didn’t have the strength to push anymore,” she said.

“They were saying just keep pushing and he’ll come out and I was like, once I tear, there’s no way that I’ll be able to continue pushing through the pain,” she added.

Max then decided to move back into the water and she said it helped her push Baby Skye out.

“Once he came out, I just felt this overwhelming joy,” she said.

“I just felt so much relieved that he came out safely, and he was crying really loud, so that told me that he was a healthy baby boy,” she said.

“It was so overwhelming, actually,” she added.

Max said the great thing about giving water birth at home is that you can move around and listen to your body.

A few weeks later, Max’s doula Irina shared a precious family snapshot just moments after the water birth.

In a video recorded by Irina an hour after she gave birth, Max said: “I never knew how strong I am or how strong I could be and I think that we’re all made to be strong, empowered women.”

The actress had earlier decided to give birth at home as she was anxious to go to a hospital due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. – Jannielyn Ann Bigtas/RC, GMA News