Nadya Suleman's goal in life was to be a mother, her friends and family said. That is why, even with a brood of six, including 2-year-old twins, she decided to have more embryos transferred in hopes, her mother said Friday, of getting "just one more girl."
"And look what happened. Octuplets. Dear God," Angela Suleman said four days after her 33-year-old daughter became the second person in the U.S. ever to give birth to eight babies at once.
Suleman stressed that her daughter "is not evil, but she is obsessed with children. She loves children, she is very good with children, but obviously she overdid herself."
Angela Suleman said all the children are from the same sperm donor, but she did not identify him. Her daughter is divorced, but, Suleman said, the ex-husband is not the father.
Suleman said she is caring for her six older grandchildren while their mother is in the hospital recovering. She said she had few details about how the octuplets were conceived and did not know the identity of the doctor or the clinic that transferred the frozen embryos into her daughter's uterus. Suleman said it was not Kaiser Permanente, where the babies were born.
Fertility experts have raised concerns about the number of embryos implanted and whether the procedure was within medical guidelines.
"I cannot see circumstances where any reasonable physician would transfer [so many] embryos into a woman under the age of 35 under any circumstance," said Arthur Wisot, a fertility doctor in Redondo Beach and the author of "Conceptions and Misconceptions."
Doctors probably could not deny treatment to a woman simply because she already has children, he said. However, he added, they should have taken steps to make sure she did not have so many babies at once.
"You can send her for psychological evaluation, but I honestly don't know if you can say, 'No, I won't take care of you because you have too many children,' " Wisot said.
Dr. Geeta Swamy, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University, told The Times this week that the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advise doctors "to curb these higher-order multiple gestations."
"But it really is still up to the individual physician," she said. "There aren't any laws or legal ramifications to it."
