Octomom Nadya Suleman’s Octuplets Turn 8
It seems like just yesterday that we were staring in disbelief at Octomom Nadya Suleman’s gigantic baby bump. Now, her babies are 8.
Suleman, who now goes by Natalie, invited Inside Edition to the octuplets’ recent birthday bash (they marked their birthday on Jan. 26) and we got to see how much Noah, Maliyah, Isaiah, Nariyah, Jonah, Makai, Josiah, and Jeremiah had grown. They seemed like normal kids playing in an indoor kiddie playground at the bash. At one point, they chanted “Mommy jump, mommy jump” to get 41-year-old Suleman, a mom of 14, to come down a slide.
We learned that they are all vegan (so it was cheese-less pizza and vegan chocolate cake at the party) and they live in a “small, three-bedroom townhome” with their six additional siblings outside Los Angeles. Cozy!
Suleman still seems bitter though, griping in the interview, “I never coined the term Octomom. Octomom was created by the media. They made it up without my permission.”
The single mom, a divorcée, stirred up a major controversy in 2008 when it was revealed that she had in vitro fertilization to have more children even though she already had six and was on government assistance. After the octuplets were born, the drama continued. Suleman was investigated by Los Angeles County Child Protective Services. She was accused by former nannies of allowing sex abuse to occur among her children. She went bankrupt. Her house was foreclosed on. She had plastic surgery. She posed nude. She became a stripper. She did porn (Octomom Home Alone). She had a short-lived boxing career. She pitched birth control for PETA. It was like every weird reality show you had ever seen rolled into one.
However, in November, Suleman said she retired her stripper heels after she found one of her kids playing in them.
“That was it,” she cried on Good Morning America. “That was the moment when I said I’d rather be homeless in a van with all my kids than allow any of my girls to feel that they’re not worthy enough.”
Suleman returned to her part-time job as a family therapist. The rest of the time she’s raising her brood.
“Every day I wake up around 5 and get the kids ready for school,” she told People magazine. “I work with Aidan, who’s 11 and is disabled, to get him ready, and one of my twins [Calyssa, 9] is autistic so I give her extra nurturing and attention. Then are four school drop-offs! Then I have to start cooking,” she says. “The eight kids and I are vegan — which means zero fast food — so I will cook two to three hours a day. The food is like a full-time job right there. It’s non-stop.”
We can only imagine.
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