Octuplets mum speaks for first time

Single mother Nadya Suleman, who has six other children, also ­revealed she has received death threats and been branded selfish and irresponsible by critics since the eight babies were born last month.

Neighbours have protested outside her home in California carrying placards saying: “No more babies.”

But, speaking for the first time since her release from hospital in Los Angeles, Nadya pledged to give all 14 children “unconditional love” and promised to do her best to support them.

“It was always a dream of mine, to have a large family, a huge family,” said the 33-year-old unemployed woman who still lives with her parents.

Critics condemn her for having fertility treatment, risking multiple births, when she already had six children aged between two and seven.

But defiant Nadya said she had no regrets over having six fertilised eggs implanted in her womb, two of which divided, which resulted in the eight babies, because she wanted “just one more girl”.

She said: “It turned out perfectly. All I wanted was children. I wanted to be a mom. That’s all I ever wanted in my life.”

What she got was two girls and six boys in only the second set of octuplets born in the US ever to survive.

Doctors thought she had finished giving birth when the seventh baby emerged, only for another to be ­delivered by the shocked staff.

Nadya said she struggled for seven years before finally giving birth to her first child, suffering several miscarriages.

“When you have a history of miscarriages, you think it will take a miracle.”

She received fertility treatment throughout her twenties after failing repeatedly to carry a natural pregnancy to term and became increasingly obsessed with motherhood as a way to escape a lonely childhood.

“I just longed for certain connections and attachments with another person that I really lacked, I believe, growing up,” she said.

“I didn’t feel as though, when I was a child, I had much control of my environment. I felt powerless. Reflecting back on my childhood, it was pretty dysfunctional.”

Nadya was an only child and although her parents, Ed and Angela Suleman divorced, they now live together with their daughter and her children in a three-bedroom house.

Now less than two weeks old, the eight babies are still being cared for in hospital where their doting mother is allowed to hold each of them for no more than 45 minutes a day.

The smallest, a boy known as Baby E by the hospital, who was born weighing just 1.5lb needs to be held for longer than the others, their mother claims.

She has not yet revealed the ­babies’ names and they are lettered from A to H.

Answering the critics who accuse her of being unable to provide for her growing family, Nadya says they will never lack love.

“I’m providing myself to my children, I’m loving them unconditionally and I will stop my life for them and be present for them and hold them. How many parents do that? Many do, but many don’t, and that’s selfish.”

Nadya had been separated from her husband since 2000 and officially divorced last year.

The father of the octuplets – and her six other children – is not her ex-husband but a “friend” who became a sperm donor to help her conceive.

Nadya claims she does not live off benefits. But it has emerged that she has received £118,000 in sick pay and government injury compensation after she suffered a back injury at work 10 years ago.

After the birth of her first child in 2001 she was barely able to look ­after the child, spending most of the day in bed, according to court papers.

Her grandmother Angela said: “She’s a very likeable person. She’s basically normal, except for this ­obsession she’s always had with children.”