Octuplets mom 'obsessed with having kids'

The woman who gave birth to octuplets last week conceived all 14 of her children through in vitro fertilization, is not married and has been obsessed with having children since she was a teenager, her mother said.

Angela Suleman said she was not supportive when her daughter, Nadya Suleman, decided to have more embryos implanted last year.

"It can't go on any longer," she said in a phone interview on Friday. "She's got six children and no husband. I was brought up the traditional way. I firmly believe in marriage. But she didn't want to get married."

Nadya Suleman, 33, gave birth last Monday in Bellflower, California. She was expected to remain in the hospital for at least a few more days, and her newborns for at least a month.

A spokeswoman at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center said the babies were progressing daily, with all eight breathing unassisted and being tube-fed.

While her daughter recovers, Angela Suleman is taking care of the other six children, ages 2 through 7, at the family home in Whittier, about 15 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

She said she warned her daughter that when she gets home from the hospital, "I'm going to be gone."

Angela Suleman said her daughter always had trouble conceiving and underwent in vitro fertilization treatments because her fallopian tubes are "plugged up".

There were frozen embryos left over after her previous pregnancies and her daughter didn't want them destroyed, so she decided to have more children.

Her mother and doctors have said the woman was told she had the option to abort some of the embryos and, later, the fetuses. She refused.

Her mother said she does not believe her daughter will have any more children.

"She doesn't have any more (frozen embryos), so it's over now," she said. "It has to be."

Nadya Suleman wanted to have children since she was a teenager, "but luckily she couldn't," her mother said.

"Instead of becoming a kindergarten teacher or something, she started having them, but not the normal way," he mother said.

Her daughter's obsession with children caused Angela Suleman considerable stress, so she sought help from a psychologist, who told her to order her daughter out of the house.

"Maybe she wouldn't have had so many kids then, but she is a grown woman," Angela Suleman said. "I feel responsible, and I didn't want to throw her out."

Little psychological research has been conducted on the reasons some mothers seem hooked on repeated pregnancies. David Diamond, a co-director for the Center for Reproductive Psychology in San Diego, said mothers can be drawn to repeat pregnancies for a number of reasons, with some finding the experience so satisfying they choose to become surrogates.

Diane G. Sanford, a psychologist and author specializing in women's reproductive mental health, said while she doesn't know much about Nadya Suleman's background, women who have obsessive-compulsive disorder can become fixated on different obsessions.

"Her obsession centers around children, having children and being a mother," she said. "To what degree are her esteem and identity based on being a mom, and why has this from a young age been such a preoccupation of hers?"

Yolanda Garcia, 49, of Whittier, said she helped care for Nadya Suleman's autistic son three years ago.

"From what I could tell back then, she was pretty happy with herself, saying she liked having kids and she wanted 12 kids in all," Garcia told the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

"She told me that all her kids were through in vitro, and I said 'Gosh, how can you afford that and go to school at the same time?'" she added. "And she said it's because she got paid for it."

Garcia said she did not ask for details.

Nadya Suleman holds a 2006 degree in child and adolescent development from California State University, Fullerton, and as late as last spring she was studying for a master's degree in counseling, college spokeswoman Paula Selleck told the Press-Telegram.

Questions:

1. How did Nadya Suleman conceive all 14 of her children?

2. What is David Diamond’s reason why women want to have repeated pregnancies?

3. Nadya is currently studying a master’s in what?

Answers:

1. By in vitro fertilization.

2. They find the experience so satisfying.

3. In counseling.