One editor, countless contractions, and more placenta footage than any graphics card was designed to handle.

By Emir Dolo, Chief Video Editor Turned Midwife Whisperer

The first time I met my now-wife, Amina, back in the summer of 2025, I already had a suspiciously detailed knowledge of childbirth for a video editor with no kids. She likes to joke that it was one of the reasons she chose me. Here we are in mid-2026, and somehow, I keep learning more and more.

It all started with Ruth Castro and one innocent message: “Hey Emir, can you edit this simple course?”

Every editor knows that simple is a dangerous word. When we are lucky, it means trimming a few pauses. When we are “really lucky,” it means editing 40 videos over 12 months and finding yourself inside a cinematic universe of contractions, hormones, and extremely high-definition placentas, watching hundreds of brave mums experience some of the most incredible days of their lives.

Before Ruth, I told myself, “Emir, this is the year we stick to corporate work.” But God said no, and an entirely unplanned amount of pregnancy content entered the timeline.

Suddenly, I was cutting between cervical diagrams, breathing demonstrations, birthing positions, and explanations of the golden hour. My search history began to look less like that of a video editor and more like someone preparing to deliver a baby at home in a bathtub. While my friends were watching the World Cup, I was adjusting color curves on an umbilical cord close-up. Too warm, and it looked alarming. Too cool, and it looked like a cold medical documentary. There had to be a balance.

Forty videos later, the rendering queue is finally clear, one graphics card has been fried, and a very specific set of skills has been born, along with a whole new level of empathy for mums. If an emergency happens on a long-haul flight, I am unofficially qualified to hold the camera and talk you through the breathing patterns.

The Editor Knows Too Much

At first, I was simply editing the material. Then the scale of it hit me. There were moments when I honestly wondered whether I would finish. But somewhere between the late-night renders and the fifteenth replay of the same sentence, something shifted. I stopped merely editing and started absorbing.

That is the strange thing about editing educational content. Viewers hear the information once, but we editors hear every sentence fifteen times. We listen while cutting pauses, cleaning audio, synchronizing cameras, adding captions, hunting for stock footage, doing the dishes, fixing the floor (ugh), and wondering why the render has been stuck at 98 percent for half an hour.

Eventually, the information installs itself directly into your brain. No permission request. No “Accept All Cookies.” It is simply there now.

I learned the stages of labor. I understood what oxytocin was doing and why skin-to-skin contact mattered. I could explain the benefits of the golden hour faster than my computer could export the video about it. Suddenly, I was that guy in public muttering, “No, actually, that’s not how oxytocin works.”

By month four, Ruth and I were both pretty convinced I could pass a midwifery exam. I still could not deliver a baby, of course. But I could edit a remarkably well-paced instructional video explaining how somebody else should.

The Ruth Castro Effect

Ruth is largely responsible for this accidental education. She has a gift for explaining pregnancy and birth without making either feel frightening, clinical, or distant from reality.

My job was to make sure the edit supported that, helping every explanation land as clearly and quickly as possible.

Sometimes that meant increasing the pace. Sometimes it meant finding the exact visual that would make a concept click. Other times, more often than I would like to admit, it meant spending an unreasonable amount of time deciding on the exact frame where a diagram of the cervix should appear on screen.

Somewhere around video twenty, I stopped needing context. Ruth would mention colostrum or upbreathing, and I knew instantly which supporting graphic belonged on screen. Hell, I could practically sketch it myself. She would explain a labor position, and I already understood why it mattered. I even tried a few myself. A breastfeeding clip would pop up on a stock video site, and I could tell immediately that the latch was wrong.

I may occasionally forget why I walked into a room, but I can now discuss colostrum without hesitation. I also have an anatomical model of a female pelvis from Temu sitting in my studio. More about that in a future blog post.

This was definitely not part of my original career plan.

Post-Production Postpartum

That is one of the strangest things about being an editor: every project temporarily gives you another life.

You do not just watch the material. You take it apart and rebuild it frame by frame. You study every word, gesture, pause, and subtle shift in tone. You come to know the presenter’s expressions, jokes, laughter, passion, bloopers, and full spectrum of emotions until you understand what she wants to share with the world in a way AI never could.

Spend long enough inside someone else’s expertise, and some of it inevitably becomes yours. One project teaches you how software is built. Another pulls you into business strategy, architecture, aviation, or medicine. Then Ruth Castro arrives, and suddenly you know far too much about dilation stages, perineal massage, and latch angles.

Twelve months ago, I was just a video editor.

Today, I am still a video editor. Only now, I can help my wife through a future pregnancy and I hold very strong opinions about the correct color temperature of an umbilical cord.

So yes, I have become an accidental pregnancy expert. Not a licensed one, of course. Please do not call me when your contractions begin.

But if your course needs tighter pacing, cleaner audio, seamless captions, and a tastefully color-graded placenta?

I’m your guy. For everything else pregnancy-related, please reach out to Ruth, she is out of this world.