Octuplets!

I assume that you, like me, like babies. I wish I had more than the only one I have (and he’s such a big guy now and I still love to hug him), but to conceive and deliver eight babies in the course of five minutes is unthinkable, I would not dare entertain the idea. Which is what Nadya Sulemanof did January 26, at the Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Bellflower, California.

And what is even a shocker is that Nadya Sulemanof, 33, and unmarried, has six other children, ages 2 to 7. Can you imagine having 14 children?

A host of questions has been asked by incredulous observers. Uppermost is, can Nadya afford to raise all 14 children? This question is sensible, particularly during these hard times. Will they live on doleouts?

All the babies had been conceived through vitro insemination. The procedure has been debated by theologians and moralists who believe creating human life without sexual intercourse is not acceptable. Apparently, Nadya entertained no such troubling question.

The question of ethics was raised among the doctors, some of whom, according to the Associated Press, were disturbed to hear that Nadya had been offered fertility treatment, and troubled by the possibility that she was implanted with so many embryos.

Nadya’s fertility doctor has not been identified. Her mother, according to the Associated Press, told the Los Angeles Times that all the children came from the same sperm donor but she did not identify him.

Search methods revealed that a David Solomon fathered the four oldest children, but certificates for the other children were not immediately available.

Nadya’s octuplets are the second multiple babies born in the United States. The first full set of octuplets were born alive in the US, coming 11 years after the 1998 births of the Chukwu octuplets in Houston, Texas.

Nadya’s eight babies — six boys and two girls — were delivered by Caesarean section, weighing between 1 pound, 8 ounces and 3 pounds, 4 ounces. Forty six physicians and staff assisted in the deliveries.

While Nadya is recovering in the hospital, her mother, Angela Suleman, is taking care of the other six children, at the three-bedroom family house in Whittier, about 15 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. One of them is autistic.

Nadya seems not the worrying type. Since she was little she was always saying she wanted to have 12 children. She always had trouble conceiving and underwent in vitro fertilization treatments because her fallopian tubes are “plugged up.”

Angela said Nadya did not want frozen embryos left over from her previous pregnancies destroyed, so she decided to have more children. She did not want to abort the remaining embryos, and later, the fetuses. Angela gushed, “Gosh, how are you going to support them?” Nadya said she got paid for it,” but did not elaborate.

Nadya has a college degree in child and adolescent development from California State University in Fullerton, and as late as last spring, she was studying for a master’s degree in counseling.

Angela said that once Nadya is out of the hospital, she is going to leave and let Nadya do the task of caring for her children.

Whoever is giving Nadya financial support, the task will be enormously huge. Someone estimated that the cost of raising 14 children up to age 18 (for food, clothing and housing) will be $3,219,770, and this does not include transportation and entertainment costs.

I doubt if seemingly happy-go-lucky Nadya’s brood will receive the same generous gifts that the Carlisle septuplets, conceived as the result of fertility drugs and born on Nov. 19, in Des Moines, Iowa, received : a big house, a van and diapers for the first two years, nanny services, full college scholarships, and a telephone call from US President Bill Clinton.

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