'All I wanted was children'
Following the premature birth of her IVF octuplets, Nadya Suleman faces a backlash over her increasingly peculiar approach to motherhood
Nadya Suleman inhabits a world where the entitlement society and victim mentality merge. The mother of 14, a brood that more than doubled when she stunned the world and gave birth to octuplets 13 days ago, was so resentful at being raised an only child that she embarked on an single-minded mission to produce as many offspring as possible.
And she has made it clear she believes it was her right to deploy science and a large stash of embryos to pursue that obsession – despite her status as a single mother with no regular source of income, the reported opposition of the sperm donor, and the disapproval of her own parents, who are sharing the burden of bringing up the family.
With her eight tiny newborns still in hospital in Los Angeles, Miss Suleman offered a telling insight into her own psyche – part pitying "poor me", part defiant "why shouldn't I?" – in an interview.
Publicists are also seeking to sell her story, but initial predictions that a deal might raise $2 million towards her child-care bills now appear greatly exaggerated after the public mood turned against her. Early suggestions that she could also find work as a television child-rearing guru appear even more remote.
The saga of the "octo-mom" has gripped the country and her first comments were eagerly awaited. They came on Friday when the 33-year-old former psychiatric assistant was asked by NBC interviewer Ann Curry whether, with six children already, she might have opted to have only one or two embryos implanted.
"Of course not," replied Miss Suleman, with a mixture of disbelief and scorn for the suggestion. "I wanted them all transferred. Those are my children, and that's what was available and I used them."
So Miss Suleman took what was "available" and "used" them all, even if she was only hoping for just one more girl, as she insists. She had six embryos implanted by an unnamed doctor, but they apparently split into eight in the womb after the in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and she declined selective abortion.
The birth of healthy octuplets, nine weeks' premature, was initially welcomed as a heartening medical miracle in a country ground down by the daily barrage of bad economic news.
But as it emerged that Miss Suleman was a single divorcée and already had six children aged between two and seven, all the product of IVF by the same doctor, even the tolerance of her famously liberal home state was tested to its limits.
And in a new twist, her appearance on TV – with full lips, high cheekbones and smooth forehead – prompted speculation that she has invested in cosmetic surgery as well as fertility treatment. Some websites posted pictures of her with strikingly similar facial features to another plump-lipped mother of a large family: Angelina Jolie.
In tandem with the deepening public backlash, a heated ethical debate is also swirling about the actions of the unidentified specialist, who was reported on Friday to be under investigation by the California Medical Board. There are no laws restricting the number of embryos that can be implanted, but guidelines say the maximum for a healthy woman under 35 should be two.
As the IVF will not have been covered by health insurance, the doctor may have been paid from the $170,000 in disability payments for back injuries Miss Suleman sustained in a 1999 riot at the psychiatric facility where she worked.
On NBC, Miss Suleman portrayed herself as a victim – of prejudice for choosing an "unconventional kind of life" as a single mother; and of the "isolation" of growing up in a "dysfunctional family".
Yet the picture that emerged last week, from her own words, her mother's comments and her medical records, points to a young woman raised in a typical middle-class immigrant American family, the daughter of an Iraqi linguist and a mother from Lithuanian stock who worked as a teacher.
What is in no doubt is the former cheerleader's single-minded determination to have as many children as she could. She began trying in her late teens and had the first of three miscarriages in 1995.
A year later, she married Marcos Gutierrez, a produce manager who has made no comment on the controversy, but the couple separated in 2000.
After suffering the serious back injury during the 1999 riot, she confided to a psychiatrist who was treating her that her inability to become pregnant was making her deeply depressed and had prompted suicidal thoughts.
In 2001, she finally gave birth to a child conceived using IVF with sperm donated by a friend. Over the next five years, she had another five children, including twins, via the same IVF donor.
With her mother Angela helping to look after the six grandchildren in the modest three-bedroom house they all shared in the LA suburb of Whittier, Miss Suleman returned to college, obtaining a degree in child development and then pursuing a master's in counselling.
But Miss Suleman's aspiration for a huge family was not over. Despite the sperm donor and her parents urging her to stop, she returned to her tame fertility specialist, as she wanted "just one more girl". By the time she turned up three months pregnant at the city's Kaiser Permanente medical centre (which is not the clinic where she was implanted), doctors thought she was pregnant with seven babies. But on Jan 26, there was another surprise – she gave birth to eight.
Such large multiple births have always attracted publicity. What is so unusual about this case is the level of opprobrium. Los Angeles' top-rated radio host, Bill Handel, decried the births as "freakish" and said his audience was "'ready to boycott" firms that sent gifts to Miss Suleman and her babies.
On several other radio station call-ins, there has been a dramatic volte face in listeners' mood, with the supportive calls giving way to thinly veiled outrage.
Hollywood publicist David Brokaw, an expert in "crisis management" for high-profile clients, said Miss Suleman's newly hired PR firm was dealing with a "calamity". He added: "I don't see, the way this is shaped, how you can say much about it in terms of something favourable."
Sadly for Miss Suleman, her hastily hired publicist's prediction – that the public would change their opinion of her "for the good" once she broke her silence – has not come to pass. Indeed, her words seem to have fanned the flames.
A quick scan of responses to stories posted on an LA website shows its readers to be an unsympathetic bunch. Among the more polite, "Mowry" simply branded her a "total wacko". Another outraged California resident has even started an online "Freedom from Welfare" petition, aimed at "informing our government of our displeasure at the spending of our hard-earned tax dollars" on an "unmarried, unemployed female" whose family will be a "huge burden on the state of California".
Miss Suleman's parents, who married in Las Vegas in 1974 and divorced in 1999, have put aside their differences to help their only child raise her burgeoning brood. Her mother, Angela, is now retired and spends much of her time looking after the six older children. Her Iraqi-born father, Edward, plans to return to his homeland to work as a translator to provide financial assistance to his daughter.
Miss Suleman is well-spoken and coherent, certainly not the sort of "trailer trash" who occupy the more lurid daytime chat shows. Yet this weekend her words were being dissected for evidence of her mental state, rather than celebrated for the happy news they convey.
And she even managed a dig at some other parents, suggesting that she would be a better mother than many.
"I'm providing myself to my children," she said. "I'm loving them unconditionally… Everything I do, I'll stop my life for them and be present with them and hold them and be with them. And how many parents do that? I'm sure there are many that do, but many don't, and that's unfortunate and that is selfish."
Her long-suffering mother has made clear her frustration with her daughter's family-rearing decisions in a series of exasperated comments since the birth. She observed despairingly that she wished Nadya had become a kindergarten teacher if she wanted to be surrounded by children and even felt the need to insist that her daughter was not "evil", just "obsessed".
Miss Suleman, who cradles each baby for 45 minutes a day before they have to be placed back in units helping them breathe, makes no apologies for that obsession. "Sometimes we have that dream and that passion and we take risks," she told NBC. "All I wanted was children. I wanted to be a mom. That's all I ever wanted in my life. I love my children."
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment