I was dumb & reckless when I had eight babies at once but bullies won’t troll me anymore, says Octomum Nadya Suleman
BACK in 2009, everyone was talking about Nadya Suleman – but you probably remember her as “Octomum”.
Nadya already had six children that she conceived via IVF but decided she wanted just one more child.
Her doctor was convinced that the 12 embryos she had left were unlikely to survive so suggested she implanted the whole dozen.
She decided to heed the doctor’s advice but was shocked when eight of the 12 children took leaving her pregnant with octuplets.
Very quickly, she became known all over the world as “Octomum” and in January 2009, the single mum gave birth to six boys and two girls.
People were outraged that Nadya was able to have so many children without a job or a partner to help.
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But it was in 2012 that the backlash reached new heights as the parent turned to porn, stripping and selling nude photos in order to support herself and her family.
Thirteen years later and so much has changed for Nadya, who is now known as Natalie.
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Speaking to Sunday Night reporter Angela Cox in 2020, she said: “I think I was young, dumb, irresponsible, reckless.”
In another interview, she spoke about her past and her regrets at some of the choices she made.
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She said: “Some of the things that I have done – of course that I’m ashamed of in the past – was just to put food on the table and just to take care of my family.
“My kids get embarrassed because their friends sometimes will say ‘My mum said your mum’s a stripper’.”
Nadya explained that she decided to stop stripping in 2013 when a stranger came to speak to her.
She told New Idea: “He walked straight to me and looked straight into my eyes.
“He took my hand and grabbed my arm and said in a very gentle, but firm way: ‘You don’t have to do this.’ He repeated it five times.
“I knew I had to be my healthy self again. I didn’t want my kids not to have a mum.”
These days, Nadya is working as a counsellor.
In 2016 she said in an interview on TV show The Doctors: “I went back to my life as a counsellor. I went back and my kids had a healthy, happy life.”
On top of the stress of the public’s negative opinion, Nadya also had suffered physical symptoms of the mammoth pregnancy.
Speaking to The New York Times, she said: “My back is broken because of the last pregnancy.
“Four out of the five discs in my lumbar spine are ruptured, herniated fully. And I have irreparable sacral damage. And I have peripheral neuropathy.
“I haven’t felt my toes on my foot on the right side for many years, and my fingers are numb all the time every day. The pregnancy caused it all.”
The octuplets are now 13 years old and Nadya’s oldest son Elijah turned 21 in May.
She celebrated his birthday on Instagram where she said her heart “broke” for him when she had her last pregnancy.
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She said: “My heart broke for you, as the life you once knew spiralled into a state of pandemonium; seemingly the weight of the world upon your tiny shoulders.
“Not only was my heavy heart saddened by the sudden change in your life, but my parenting deeply driven by guilt.”