LOS ANGELES - THE mother who made headlines last month by giving birth to octuplets said on Thursday she had long craved a "huge family" and tried for years to get pregnant before conceiving her first child through in-vitro fertilisation.
Nadya Suleman, 33, spoke of her loneliness as an only child and her quest to achieve motherhood through medical intervention in an NBC News television interview taped 10 days after her octuplets arrived.
Veil of secrecy lifted
WHITTIER (California) - THE veil of secrecy octuplets' mother Nadya Suleman shrouded herself in for more than a week was lifted on Thursday with the release of public documents showing that the 33-year-old woman struggled with depression for years until she finally began to realize her childhood dream of having a huge family.
Ms Suleman, who now has 14 children, told doctors she battled with depression for years after she was injured in a riot in 1999 at the state mental hospital where she worked.
Brief excerpts from the interview, to air next Monday and Tuesday on NBC's Today and Dateline programs, were released by the network in advance of the broadcasts.
The transcripts revealed few details of how Ms Suleman, unmarried, single and living with her mother in the Los Angeles suburb of Whittier, came to be the parent of 10 boys and four girls, all reported to be the product of a sperm donor. Her first six children are said to range in age from 2 to 7.
Asked by NBC's Ann Curry how an only child ended up with 14 children of her own, Ms Suleman said, 'That was always a dream of mine, to have a large family, a huge family.' Ms Suleman said she tried for seven years to get pregnant, going through various types of fertility assistance, before she finally conceived through an 'IVF procedure. ... From that facility, it was successful. And then I just kept going in,' she said.
It was not clear whether the same procedure was used for any of her subsequent children, including the octuplets.
For women under age 35 conceiving through in-vitro fertilisation, in which eggs and sperm are combined in a dish, physicians normally implant no more than two of the resulting embryos at a time.
Transferring more embryos than that under most circumstances would breach medical guidelines designed to avoid high-risk multiple pregnancies, fertility experts have said.
Ms Suleman's Jan 26 delivery of six boys and two girls - marking only the second known set of US octuplets to survive birth - was hailed as a medical triumph by the team of doctors who delivered them but elicited dismay from many reproductive specialists, who said high-order births entail many perils for the mother and offspring.
Some cognitive disabilities in premature babies can take years to become evident.
The babies, delivered by Caesarean section 9 1/2 weeks premature at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Centre in the L.A. suburb of Bellflower, are all reported doing well, breathing room air and receiving a combination of donated breast milk and nutritional supplements.
Ms Suleman came to Kaiser, her doctors said, in her first trimester of pregnancy from 'an outside provider.' Experts in reproductive medicine said her pregnancy was an obvious example of a fertility assistance case gone awry.
Ms Suleman's mother, Angela, has been quoted in separate published interviews expressing frustration at her daughter's preoccupation with having children. She has characterised her daughter as a 'really good mother' but 'a little misguided.' -- REUTERS
