When a young woman is faced with an unexpected pregnancy, many issues invade her thoughts.
“What am I going to do? Will the father of the baby stay with me? How can I tell my parents? What will my friends think of me? What will other men think of me? What does my reputation look like?”
And, because abortion was made legal in 1973, the inevitable question: “Should I, can I, have an abortion?”
Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, that question still pervades, although the answer is more complex. Now, there are other questions: “Where can I go? Does my state allow abortions? If I need to travel, how can I get there?”
One of the questions that is always asked by this young woman, particularly if she is living below the poverty line, is: “How can I afford a baby?”
In today’s economy, with spiraling inflation, this question becomes even more weighty for poor women. And they often can’t see beyond that reality.
To address that reality is why Bottoms Up Diaper Bank was founded in 2018. Tim and Jo Welsh realized that poor women need help transitioning from childbirth to motherhood, and that diapers are part of “affording a baby.”
Since 2018, the Welshes have distributed more than 3 million diapers to food banks, child-care facilities, domestic abuse shelters, pregnancy centers and other organizations that serve mothers in need. And the organization continues to grow.
“We’re now serving 16 Ohio counties and have more than 75 community partners that we deliver to,” said Jo Welsh, president of Bottoms Up. “When Tim came up with this idea, we were just trying to do something good for a few people, but apparently God thought just a few people wasn’t enough.”
The latest group of partners comes from Gallia, Meigs and Jackson counties, some of the most impoverished in Ohio. Delivering diapers to these counties involves logistics issues, as it’s about a two-hour drive to that part of the state from central Ohio. But Welsh takes it in stride.
“What Bottoms Up does is not extraordinary,” she said. “We’re just living up to our Christian mandate to aid those in need. We’ve never tried to make it grow, but it just grows by itself.”
Diaper need, according to the National Diaper Bank Network, is the lack of sufficient diapers to keep a child clean, dry and healthy. And the need continues to grow in Ohio and across the nation.
Bottoms Up estimates that satisfying the diaper need in the counties it serves would require more than 8 million diapers a year. Bottoms Up can’t fill that need. But Welsh is hopeful.
“If we continue to be blessed with the support that we’ve experienced in the first four years of our existence, we can make greater inroads to the aggregate need and help more and more mothers and families as a result. In August, we distributed nearly 48,000 diapers to our partners in Franklin County alone. We think that’s pretty amazing, but it’s not nearly enough.”
Those diapers likely helped nearly 1,300 families, and the 3 million diapers that Bottoms Up has distributed since it started have helped approximately 100,000 families in need.
Welsh is passionate about helping those less fortunate who, in many cases, have nowhere else to turn. Making sure that food pantries and other community partners always have the right size diaper in the right quantities is the goal of Bottoms Up.
“We don’t want to have any mother be turned away from any of our partners when she comes to them seeking help with her diaper need. Thankfully, to our knowledge, no mother has,” Welsh said.
“The stories that we hear are just heartbreaking. Every week, we hear of a grandmother raising her grandchildren, or a mother scraping out a used diaper and re-using it because she can’t afford enough diapers.”
In the end, Welsh is just grateful.
“To be given this opportunity to serve the poor is a profound privilege. God is good.”
Bottoms Up Diaper Bank is a nonprofit organization that works to end diaper need in the area it serves. For more information, contact Welsh at jo@bottomsup.life or visit https://www.bottomsup.life.