Maria Torres walked into Mount Sinai Hospital Thursday morning carrying a precious load: Ethan Rico, her son.
Ethan didn’t need medical care. The 3-week-old was fine, asleep under a blanket decorated with lions and tigers.
Instead, Torres was back at the West Side hospital where Rico was born for another reason— free diapers, hundreds of them.
“It’s a big help,” Torres said as she held Rico in a car seat.
The newborn, like others born at the hospital, is entitled to a free six-month supply of 1,500 diapers. The hospital launched the program in January. Diapers are distributed every Thursday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the hospital entrance at 2272 W. 15 St. in North Lawndale.
Torres took a one-month supply home from the hospital with her after Rico was born. This week, she was back to replenish the supply.
The process was simple. She left her car at the hospital entrance and ducked inside, where she was greeted by Alejandra Chavez, a community outreach worker who already had her name on a list.
Torres knew Chavez — she told her about the program.
“Of course, I remember her,” said Torres. Ethan was her sixth child, and her other five also had been born at Mt. Sinai.
“I was so happy” to find out about the free diapers after giving birth to Ethan, she said.
“I like to tell them I’m the godmother of the Pampers,” said Chavez, who was hired to run the program.
Standing among four pallets stacked with diapers, Chavez said she expected to give away 5,000 diapers on Thursday. If a family can’t make it in the morning, she leaves the diapers at the front desk.
When not distributing diapers, Chavez is introducing herself to new parents, telling them about the service. She sees about a dozen new parents daily and said nearly 1,200 families have participated so far. The hospital expects to distribute around 4 million diapers by year’s end.
Some of those went home Thursday with 4-month-old Antoinette Gerald, and she needed one of them as soon as she arrived.
Her dad, Tywan Gerald, stayed in the car to change her while her mom, Latashia Cannon, ran inside.
Chavez helped bring the diapers out to the car and stuck around to hold a freshly-changed Antoinette, whose plump cheeks stuck out from under a knit cap.
The couple took home a two-month supply — 500 diapers, which could cost more than $100 at Target.
“For families that need to save a bit, that need more money to pay bills, it helps,” Gerald said. The construction worker estimated their daughter goes through seven diapers a day.
The money saved has in part allowed Cannon to stay home with the baby.
“It’s a blessing, it’s really a blessing,” Cannon said. “I’m forever grateful.”
Michael Loria is a staff reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times via Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster the paper’s coverage of communities on the South and West sides.
