Bare Belly Organics: The Protectors

These days, spending a sunny day at the pool can start to feel like a sink-or-swim proposition: Do you go old school and just cover up from head to toe to avoid burn, or do you use a sunscreen? If a sunscreen, do you use chemical or mineral? Which worries you more, possible hormone disruption or spray inhalation issues?
Lisa McHugh and Jill Nobles are two moms who, when faced with similar concerns, started Bare Belly Organics.
McHugh, a former pediatric nurse and Kennesaw mother of six, was already well on her way to green living when she noticed something on her spray sunscreen.
“I looked at the back of it and it says, ‘Do not inhale’ in capital letters,” McHugh says. “What you absorb through your skin goes directly into your bloodstream. Just like inhaling it. So I started Googling the ingredients and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’”
With a recipe found by Nobles, McHugh started making natural sunscreen formulas and testing them on her own “red headed kids.” When McHugh felt she got it right, she grabbed Nobles, and they got started.
The women researched FDA codes on sunscreen, which require thousands of dollars in testing, McHugh says, pulling out a 4-inch thick stack of papers. They chose containers, designed the logo and started a website.
Bare Belly Organic sunscreens are mineral based, meaning rather than using chemical protection, they use non-nanoparticle zinc oxide as a physical barrier to protect skin. Bare Belly uses organic, natural ingredients and made-in-America packaging. Washington-based nonprofit Environmental Working Group gave Bare Belly Organics’ SPF 30 and SPF 34 sunscreens its best rating.
To keep the business going, Nobles, an Alpharetta mother of three boys and a practicing architect, works wherever she is; her car, at a son’s game during warm ups or on a park picnic table. McHugh, who homeschools her six children, stays up late to make the products in her kitchen.
Both women say their families have been affected by their business. Their children are learning time management, marketing and design skills. Nobles’ husband, a former minor league baseball player, left his construction job in May so she could focus on her careers. The results have been beneficial to the whole family.
“One whole year he worked out of state. The children … would see him on the weekends and by then he was so tired he didn’t’ really want to do anything,” she says. “Now they have football in the afternoons in the backyard with all the neighborhood children.”
McHugh’s husband already has a flexible schedule, but she has high hopes for Bare Belly’s effect on her family.
“What would be better than living a simple lifestyle, and your husband doesn’t have to work? I’m not saying that I want to get rich. I think it would just be the coolest thing in the whole wide world to just maintain your lifestyle, a middle-class life here, and have your husband and your whole family together all the time,” McHugh says.  “That’s kind of our dream.”
Bare Belly is sold locally and on Amazon. For more information visit barebellyorganics.com.