About
Scientist & Doula
My name is María Belén Farias, though everyone calls me Belén or just Bel. I come from Argentina and I live in Luxembourg since early 2019. I am a doula (Amazonas (Arg) & Paramana Doula (UK)), a babywearing consultant (Crianza en Brazos (Arg)), and a scientist: I have a PhD in theoretical physics (Universidad de Buenos Aires (Arg)), and I have worked as a researcher for over 10 years now. I am also a dancer with over 15 years of experience in aerial arts, and I am a regular yoga practitioner.
All these different aspects of myself, and many others, are like threads that I have been weaving to form Rebozo Luxembourg, the place where everything comes together to offer support for families. Here at Rebozo I will accompany you in your parenthood journey with a loving, empathetic and flexible but, over all, judgment-free and evidence-based approach.
On this webpage you will find the different ways in which I can support you, as well as information about pregnancy, birth, postpartum, babywearing, breasfeeding, and a lot of other topics that fascinate me. I will be also sharing some results of my own research about birth in Luxembourg.
If you want to know more about me and how I got here, keep on reading!
My journey
To understand how I went from a hard-scientist (if you don’t know what a theoretical physicist does, think of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory) whose dream was to be a University Professor, to becoming a doula, I need to tell you a bit about my own experience with motherhood.
My first baby was born in Buenos Aires in 2018. I had a very joyful pregnancy where I kept dancing and training on the silks until the day before I gave birth, which came unexpectedly early when my waters broke at 35 weeks. I had a vague plan of having a natural birth and I had chosen a team that was (in theory) perfect for that, but I didn’t really prepare myself and I ended up getting the whole package of interventions (induction with oxytocin, epidural, episiotomy, Kristeller). The worst part was that, due to the protocol of the clinic, my baby had to be one week in the NICU. I struggled with breasfeeding, mostly as a consequence of the awfully outdated practice of that NICU, and that made my postpartum quite difficult. It was only a couple weeks later, when I started wearing my baby on a wrap, that things started to look better. I do not exaggerate when I say that babywearing saved my postpartum journey, and that is why I am so passionate about it. It gave me confidence as a mother but, more importantly, it allowed me and my baby to bond in a way that was not possible (that was stolen from us) in the first weeks of his life.
Even though my labor and birth were not horribles (the most difficult for me was the after), and we did put music and danced and moved around, I still felt quite powerless and I knew there had to be possible to have a more positive experience, to be more in control, be more conscious of the decisions I was making and the options I had and, above all, feel listened to and respected.
For my second pregnancy, then, I took a drastically different approach. I decided to get informed, to get support, and to prepare myself physically, mentally and emotionally for my birth. I read books, I took courses, and I got the support of many amazing women (doulas, yoga teachers, perinatal psychologists, etc.). I worked really hard both on the outside and on the inside, but the result was better than what I could have never asked for. I had an amazing, unmedicated hospital birth with no interterventions, and my baby and I got two hours of uninterrupted skin to skin after birth. It is hard to describe how incredibly empowering and healing this experience was for me (though if you want to hear my full birth story, you are welcome to attend one of our birth circles, I sometimes share it there!).
In the weeks following this birth, I had one question going on an on in my head, that I just couldn’t silence. Why couldn’t it be like this for me the first time around? Why did I need to go through that experience to be able to make the right choices, find support, and give my baby the welcome to this world that he deserved? It didn’t feel fair. I didn’t have an answer for this, but it did trigger another question: can I do something to help other women have better experiences at their births? That is when I decided to train as a doula. At the moment I co-organize the Luxembourg Birth Circles, in which women share their experiences giving birth here, and I also created “Birth is Movement” , a theoretical-practical birth preparation course in which I share all the evidence-based information that I would have loved to have during my first pregnancy.
Education & Experience
We as doulas support families not with what we know or what we have, but with who we are. Nevertheless, I love to study and learn, and I always try to follow my curiosity. So I am going to share with you here some of my past experience as well as some of the courses and trainings I have done over the years.
- I am a certified pregnancy, birth and postpartum doula (Amazonas, 2021)
- I am a certified babywearing consultant (Crianza en Brazos, 2020)
- I took the Paramana Doula course “Protecting Birth” with Michel Odent and Liliana Lammers (2022)
- I did an Actualization on Rebozo and Movement (Amazonas, 2022)
- I have a PhD in Physics (Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2017) and over 10 years of experience in scientific research.
- I am a certified Esferodinamia instructor for pregnancy, labor and postpartum (Esferobalones, 2023)
- I also love teaching and I have a very diverse teaching experience: I have been a lecturer at different Universities (Universidad de Buenos Aires (Arg), Universidad Tecnológica Nacional (Arg), Université du Luxembourg (Lux)) for both undergraduate and graduate courses. I also taught aerial arts (aerial silks, aerial hoops, pole dancing) for many years in Buenos Aires.
- Movement is a very important part of my life. For almost 20 years now I have always been moving: I took countless dance lessons, circus lessons, I performed in many events and plays as an aerialist, and I am a regular yoga practitioner.