"Perhaps I'm wrong, but something in my gut is telling me this isn't right. A woman with 6 children goes on fertility medicine and implants 8 more fertilized eggs in her womb? Why? Because she always wanted 7 kids, and was disappointed she only had 6? I mean, it's one thing to get pregnant again after having six kids, it's another to take fertility drugs and go for in vitro. And, these are octuplets, which also raises health issues (in addition to the overall question of whether any one family can appropriately raise 14 kids). Just me, or does anyone else get a bad feeling when they read stories like this?"posted by ericb at 11:03 AM on January 30, 2009 [2 favorites]
“‘It's going to be difficult,’ [Angela] Suleman [the children’s maternal grandmother] noting that her daughter's father is going back to Iraq, where neighbors said he worked as a contractor, to help support the expanded family.AP (first FPP link):
The mother of the octuplets lives on a well-kept cul-de-sac in Whittier, where more than a dozen reporters and camera crews descended Thursday.
Neighbors said she and her six children -- ages 7, 6, 5, 3 and 2-year-old twins -- live there with her mother. Her marital status is unknown. Family members did not answer the door, but when a reporter called the home asking for Suleman, she spoke briefly.
According to her account, when her daughter discovered that she was expecting multiple babies, doctors gave her the option of selectively reducing the number of embryos, but she declined.
‘What do you suggest she should have done? She refused to have them killed,’ Suleman said as the sound of children could be heard in the background. ‘That is a very painful thing.’
The information about the family came amid growing questions about the medical ethics of the case and how the woman came to carry eight babies to term.
Although the successful births at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Bellflower have received worldwide attention, they also have prompted disapproval from some medical ethicists and fertility specialists, who argue that high-number multiple births endanger the mother and also frequently lead to long-term health and developmental problems for the children.
Under the guidelines of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, U.S. doctors normally would not implant more than two embryos at a time in a woman under the age of 35. After that age it is more difficult to become pregnant. The mother of the octuplets is believed to be 33, based on available public records.
…Hospital officials said the woman came to Kaiser already in her 12th week of pregnancy. They did not say where she received the fertility treatment.”
Media knew little about the woman until a family acquaintance told CBS' ‘The Early Show’ on Thursday that the mother is ‘fairly young’ and lives with her parents and her six children.posted by ericb at 12:23 PM on January 30, 2009
Within hours, media had camped out at the family's home in Whittier, where the babies' grandfather pulled up in a minivan in the evening and briefly spoke to The Associated Press. Beside him were two children — a 7-year-old and 6-year-old — who said they were excited to have eight new siblings.
But the grandfather warned that media may have a tougher time finding the family after the babies are released from the hospital.
‘We have a huge house, not here,’ said the man, who would only identify himself as Ed. ‘You are never going to know where it is.’
The mother's other children are 5 and 3, and 2-year-old twins, neighbors told the Times.
"CBS News has learned that the family of the octuplets born this week outside Los Angeles filed for bankruptcy and abandoned a home a little over a year-and-a-half ago.I agree that it is the mother's choice (and that of the father -- whomever he may be) to have the children, but I'd say there was very poor planning all the way around.
Early Show national correspondent Hattie Kauffman says the mother is in her mid-thirties and lives with her parents.
There's been no mention of the octuplets' father, Kauffman observes.
The grandfather, she adds, is apparently going to head back to his native Iraq to earn money for the growing family. He told CBS News he's a former Iraqi military man.
...The woman and her children live in a neighborhood of small, one-story homes, Kauffman reports, all with two-to-three bedrooms at most. Soon, she pointed out, there will be 14 children and at least three adults living in one of the homes -- until the grandfather heads back to his native Iraq, "
"It was also revealed that Miss Suleman’s father - an Iraqi contractor - may be forced to return to work in his native country to help support his 14 grandchildren.posted by ericb at 3:04 PM on January 30, 2009
Residents in the quiet LA cul-de-sac where Miss Suleman – who they said looks to be Hispanic - lives, said they have never seen her with anyone who looked like a boyfriend or husband.
A neighbour who gave her name only as Verda said: 'I don’t think she is married or has a partner. The only male I’ve seen over there in the two years or so she has lived there is her father, who must be in his 60s.'"
“No matter what your income, giving birth and caring for octuplets is an expensive proposition. The infants' delivery was performed by a team of 46 doctors, nurses and surgical assistants stationed in four delivery rooms at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center in Bellflower, Calif., and it likely cost hundreds of thousands of dollars....according to public records, [the family] filed for bankruptcy in March 2008. That's ten months ago.
‘You can think of it as an eightfold increase on a singleton birth,’ said Steven M. Donn, director of the Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine at the University of Michigan Health System. ‘By comparison, the mother's care will probably be a bargain.’
Costs for the average delivery of a full-term pregnancy range from $9,000 to $25,000, depending on whether the baby is delivered by Caesarean section or vaginally. Eight times $25,000 is a whopping $200,000.
But Donn said the cost of the octuplets' delivery likely exceeded that number because doctors prepared for the risks associated with a multiple-birth delivery.
‘For reasons we don't completely understand, risks with multifetal deliveries are greater than [normal births],’ Donn said.
The medical costs for babies born preterm, like the California octuplets, which were born nine weeks premature, are also above average.
‘The real significant costs come on the pediatric side, particularly when it comes to neonatal intensive care,’ said Dr. Geeta Swamy, a maternal-fetal specialist at Duke University Medical Center.
A full-term pregnancy lasts from 38 to 42 weeks, according to the National Institutes of Health, and Swamy estimated for babies born at 30 weeks the hospital stay could be ‘anywhere from six weeks to six months.’
For an infant stay in a neonatal intensive care unit, costs can add up to ‘a few thousand a day,’ she said.
‘So we are looking at probably several hundreds of thousands of dollars for the family. If it is $100,000 per baby, for example, then it would be $800,000 for all eight,’ Swamy said.
…When the infants leave the hospital, the bills will keep piling up.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's new Cost of Raising a Child Calculator -- a new tool the department has developed to help parents prepare for expenses and life insurance -- a middle-class family living in the western United States can expect to spend at least $9,171 on year's worth of housing, food, transportation, clothing, health, education and other expenses for a single child under the age of 1.
For eight children under the age of 1, that number mushrooms to $73,368.
…And then there are the costs beyond adolescence, like college. By the time the octuplets turn 18 in 2027, the Web site SavingforCollege.com projects that four-year tuition at a public university will cost $87,200 per student.
If all eight octuplets head to a public college, the family could find itself stuck with tuition bills totalling nearly $700,000. That sum rises if any of the children go to a more expensive private college.”
"The octuplet mum works in a fertility clinic and had IVF despite already having six kids, it was claimed yesterday [Friday].posted by ericb at 4:57 PM on January 30, 2009
A neighbour said all 14 kids were born using the same sperm donor. Questions are being asked over who gave eight embryos to single mum Nadya Suleman-Guiterrez, 33, who lives with her six kids and parents in a three-bed bungalow.
US guidelines say under-35s should get two."
That poor woman. No one who is reasonably healthy emotionally would do this. I wish we could all have some sympathy for her.
"...the children's grandmother, Angela Suleman, told The Associated Press her daughter resorted to in vitro fertilization because 'her fallopian tubes are plugged up' and she had trouble conceiving.posted by ericb at 5:22 AM on January 31, 2009
She said her daughter, who is unmarried, conceived all her children that way and has been obsessed with having children since she was a teenager.
Fourteen grandchildren later, Angela Suleman expects her daughter is finished with fertility treatment.
'It's over now,' she said. 'It has to be. It can't go on any longer. 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. So she got the in vitro.'" *
“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.’posted by ericb at 5:50 AM on January 31, 2009 [1 favorite]
…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 was not the father.
…Allison Frickert, a friend of Nadya Suleman, said the mother was not seeking potential fame or financial benefit. ‘There was no overriding situation, other than having more children to love,’ she said.
‘Her whole life, she couldn't wait to be a mom,’ Frickert said. ‘That was her No. 1 goal.’
Friends and family also reported that Nadya Suleman worked as a psychiatric technician until she was injured on the job. Then she began having children and enrolled in school.
…She and her children live with her mother in a 1,550-square-foot home in Whittier, and her father has been working in Iraq as a translator to help support the family.
…As the media camped outside the house, Angela Suleman said in a telephone interview that she could not explain her daughter's decision.
Nadya Suleman has always loved children, her mother said. Then she sighed. ‘I wish she would have become a kindergarten teacher.’” *
“ABC News has learned through San Bernardino Superior Court Records that the 33-year-old California woman, whose name is Nadya Doud (she filed to have her name changed to Nadya Suleman in 2001 -- though it was not clear if the request was granted), divorced her husband, Marcos Gutierrez, in January 2008.I suspect the media is 'hot on the trail' to find Marcos Gutierrez and David Solomon for comment.
The document indicates ‘no children of the marriage,’ suggesting that Gutierrez was not the father of Doud's previous six children.
…Angela Suleman [the grandmother of the 14 children] told the AP that all 14 children were conceived through in vitro fertilization….She said that while all the kids came from a single sperm donor, the donor is not Marcos Guitierrez.
…An AP review of birth records identifies a David Solomon as the father of the oldest four children.
Doud lived with Gutierrez for about three-and-a-half years from August 1996 until January 2000, when she moved back with her parents, Edward and Angela Suleman, living at several addresses, records show. The parents were granted a divorce in Las Vegas in 1999, but evidently still live together.
Within a few years of living with Gutierrez, Doud began having her 14 children.
Another set of court documents may raise the question of whether Doud will be able to afford care for all those kids. The public records indicate that Doud's mother filed for bankruptcy in March 2008.
The family currently lives in a three-bedroom home in suburban Los Angeles.”*
"Yolanda Garcia, 49, of Whittier, said she helped care for Nadya Suleman's autistic son three years ago."So, in addition to supporting 14 children, care is needed for a special needs child, not to mention what health issues the octuplets may experience in the future.
"The single mother of octuplets born in California last week is seeking $2m (£1.37m) from media interviews and commercial sponsorship to help pay the cost of raising the children.I can't help but wonder if this was part of "the plan" all along. Notoriety, attention, a role as a television personality and...PROFIT!
Nadya Suleman, 33, plans a career as a television childcare expert, since it emerged last week that she already had six children before giving birth on Monday. She now has 14 below the age of eight.
Although still confined to an LA hospital bed, she intends to talk to two influential television hosts this week - media mogul Oprah Winfrey, and Diane Sawyer, who presents Good Morning America.
Her family has told agents she needs cash from deals such as nappy sponsorship - she will get through 250 nappies a week over the next few months - and the agents will gauge public reaction to her story. A veteran from the ICM agency said: 'If she wins over Oprah or Diane Sawyer, she will have the world at her feet.'
Her earning power, though, could be diminished by a growing ethical and medical controversy."
"The birth of a living healthy set of octuplets in California this week raised a host of weighty ethical issues. Was it irresponsible to attempt to bring 8 babies to term when the option of selective reduction was available? Why was an octuplet pregnancy allowed to occur in the first place? When it became clear that an excessive number of follicles had developed, why did the fertility specialist continue the cycle knowing that disaster was likely to occur?posted by ericb at 3:52 PM on January 31, 2009
Now, amazingly enough, we learn that those were not even the biggest ethical issues involved. The babies’ grandmother revealed yesterday that the octuplets mother is young, apparently single, lives at home with her parents and … already had 6 children!
This raises the very disturbing possibility that octuplets were conceived deliberately for the attention and money that could be expected. In an age of Jon and Kate plus 8 (the hit television show about a family with twins and sextuplets), and the new show about the Duggars (the family of 18 biological children) premiering soon, it is entirely possible that this woman set out to conceive a set of higher order multiples for the fame and fortune she imagined it might bring.
...Something does not add up here. A young, presumably unmarried woman, living at home with her parents, who already has 6 children is exceedingly unlikely to be diagnosed with infertility, is unlikely to be treated for infertility even if she is having difficulty getting pregnant, could not have had 8 embryos placed in her uterus by in-vitro fertilization and would almost certainly be counseled to avoid intercourse in any cycle where 8 follicles were developing. Add to that the fact that the woman showed up for care already pregnant with octuplets and suspicions are raised that this pregnancy was conceived in a deliberate effort to have a spectacular outcome, including any publicity and money it might generate."
Medical experts across America have queued up to express their rage. "If this resulted from an IVF treatment, we can say that transferring eight embryos in an IVF cycle is well beyond our guidelines," said Dale McClure, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.posted by pineapple at 10:43 AM on February 1, 2009
Meanwhile, Arthur Wisot, a fertility doctor in Los Angeles, raised a further prospect. "I cannot imagine that any of the mainstream practices in the Los Angeles area were involved in this. I would guess... she either went out of the country or went to a practice that flies below the radar," he told a TV reporter.
"The mother of the octuplets born last week in California is getting a lot of offers for book deals, TV shows and other business ventures.posted by ericb at 1:57 PM on February 2, 2009
That's according to a PR firm she's hired.
The head of the PR company says Nadya Suleman is 'the most sought after mom in the world right now.' She says hundreds of requests have poured in from all over the world.
Joann Killeen says Suleman hasn't made any decision on what she might do. Suleman remains hospitalized with her children in Los Angeles.
Killeen says some of the deals and requests for interviews involve offers to pay. She's not saying how much is being offered, but notes that it will be expensive to raise eight babies. She says Suleman plans to carefully review her financial opportunities."
"Where is the unlimited supply of diapers, formula and baby wipes? The free van? The brand-new house?posted by ericb at 7:07 AM on February 4, 2009
Women who give birth to six, seven or eight babies are often showered with dazzling gifts from big corporations, local businesses and strangers. But that is not happening with the Southern California mother who delivered octuplets last week."
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I disagree. This planet is not infinite.
posted by Liquidwolf at 10:54 AM on January 30, 2009 [1 favorite]