Nadya Suleman is ready to share her parenting journey on her own terms.
Sixteen years after welcoming eight babies in a Los Angeles area hospital, earning her the name “Octomom,” Suleman, 49, is returning to the spotlight and showcasing what life is really like raising the longest surviving group of octuplets — along with six additional children.
“I’ve been hoping and praying to one day have the opportunity to actually share my true story, to have a voice when I didn’t have one at the beginning,” Suleman said on the Friday, March 7, episode of The View. “Now my kids are older. My octuplets are now 16 and they’ve been strongly encouraging me.”
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Throughout the six-part documentary series Confessions of Octomom, viewers will watch Suleman provide an intimate look at her history and her life today as a mom of 14. Along the way, she’s hoping to provide viewers with a look at the side of her family many haven’t seen.
‘Octomom’ Nadya Suleman’s Family Photos Over the Years With 14 Kids
Keep reading to see the biggest bombshells from the series and watch Confessions of Octomom airing on Lifetime Mondays at 10 p.m. ET.
Nadya Suleman’s Private Disguise
Whether she’s driving in the car, working out in a gym or grocery shopping in a supermarket, Suleman prefers to keep her entire face and body covered for a variety of reasons.
“I was very consistent for decades since I was in my early 20s with sunscreen and I’m really into protecting my skin from the sun,” she explained in the opening scene. “That’s not the only reason. For sure, it helps with my social anxiety. Nobody knows. They look and they look away. It doesn’t draw any attention because people don’t want to look and stare.”
While her kids acknowledged that it may be weird to some, their mom’s public attire is normal to them.
How Nadya Suleman’s Tell-All Interview Came to Be
Days after welcoming eight kids, Suleman reluctantly chose to participate in a televised interview with former NBC News journalist Ann Curry.
“I felt horrible about myself. I gained 150 pounds during the whole pregnancy so at that point, I was still about 100 pounds heavier than normal,” she shared. “They let me pick what interviewer so I opted [for] a news anchor and I didn’t know who she was. I never watched anything she did.”
As for why she picked Curry, Suleman said “she was one of the only women” who was on the list of available journalists and she thought “I’d feel comfortable talking to a woman.”
Ultimately, Suleman said she wasn’t in the right “frame of mind to be transparent or honest.” Instead, she felt like she was “under attack” and just wanted to be reunited with her kids.
Why Nadya Suleman Wants to Be Called Natalie Today
Throughout the docuseries and in recent interviews, Suleman has been called by her birth name, Natalie.
“I chose to go back to my birth name,” she explained, “because Nadya at the time was intertwined with the pain affiliated with Octomom.” Future episodes promise to dive deeper into how and why Suleman was able to emotionally move away from her “Octomom” identity.
Nadya Suleman’s Thoughts on Having a Husband
According to Suleman, being a single mother left her the target of more salacious headlines and public outrage than what she believes she would have endured had she welcomed her children alongside a partner.
“I guarantee that If I was more conventional and led a more traditional lifestyle, a husband would have acted as a buffer in the public hatred,” she claimed. “It would be far less severe. There may have been judgment, but it wouldn’t have been this public outrage.”
In simpler terms, Suleman stated, “If I had a husband, there really wouldn’t have been much of a story.”
Nadya Suleman’s Difficult Decision
When she was 31 weeks pregnant, Suleman remembered receiving the terrifying news that one of her babies had stopped growing.
Not feeling any contractions, she expressed hopes to wait until at least 34 weeks gestation before delivering her children. Ultimately, she had to make a decision.
“Either to save [Jonah’s] life [and] within 24 hours, deliver all of them or allow him to stop growing and then pass and then allow the others to grow bigger, stronger so they could fight,” she said. “I couldn’t allow him to die.” Days later, Suleman welcomed eight healthy babies.
Nadya Suleman’s Painful Delivery
When recalling the birth of her octuplets, Suleman described the delivery as “horrible.”
“I had to get induced. They did the epidural and the anesthesiologist had come up to me and said, ‘I’m so sorry, but the circumference of [your] abdominal cavity is a little too large for all the epidural to cover so [you] might feel a little bit,’” she recalled. “That was a euphemism really, because I felt everything.”
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Nadya Suleman’s Big Surprise
While numerous doctors — including an ultrasound technician — only expected seven babies to be delivered, Suleman had a “mother’s intuition” or a “gut feeling,” that she was expecting eight.
After the seventh baby was born, Suleman recalled the moment “a resident went and examined the uterus to make sure everything was ok and he felt a hand.” Sure enough, the nearly 45 hospital workers working on Suleman’s delivery had one final baby to deliver.
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