Depression and a series of miscarriages led Nadja Suleman to pursue a large family, even after giving birth to six children, report Kimi Yoshino, Jessica Garrisonand Andrew Blankstein
FOR SEVEN years from her teens, Nadya Suleman tried to have a baby. She suffered three miscarriages. She tried artificial insemination and fertility drugs, to no avail. By 2000 a back injury and her inability to bear children had sent her into a deep depression, in which she told a psychiatrist that she had suicidal thoughts.
On many days, she did not get out of bed. One doctor asked her what activities she had given up. Her answer: “Everything”. That same year, she tried in-vitro fertilisation and became pregnant.
Hundreds of pages of California state documents reviewed by the Los Angeles Times and excerpts from her first interview, recorded by NBC News hours after she was released from hospital, have begun to sketch a portrait of the 33-year-old Californian woman who gave birth last week to octuplets.
Suleman has come under fierce criticism for giving birth to the octuplets even though she already had six children and is a single mother who lives with her parents. In her interview with NBC’s Ann Curry, she tried to explain why she wanted to have so many children. “I just longed for certain connections and attachments with another person that I – I really lacked, I believe, growing up,” Suleman said.
“I didn’t feel as though, when I was a child, I had much control of my environment. I felt powerless. And that gave me a sense of predictability. I – reflecting back on my childhood – I know it wasn’t functional. It was pretty . . . pretty dysfunctional, and whose isn’t?”
Suleman didn’t elaborate in the portion of the interview released by NBC (more will be broadcast on Monday and Tuesday). But she said her childhood made her yearn for many children of her own. “That was always a dream of mine, to have a large family, a huge family,” she said.
Considerably more detail is provided in the 332 pages of documents released by the state in response to a public records request by the Times. Those paint a picture of a placid suburban childhood, which Suleman herself described by saying that she was well-loved and close to her parents.
Born in Fullerton and raised in southeast Los Angeles County, she grew up in a “protected and sheltered” home environment, Suleman told a state-appointed doctor who was reviewing her workers’ compensation claim. She earned “well above average” grades and enjoyed schoolwork. She described herself as “half-Arabic, half-Lithuanian”, said she was brought up Protestant and continues to practise her religion. She is portrayed as an outgoing woman and a former cheerleader with many friends who enjoyed reading and writing.
Not long after high school, she began her quest as a single woman to have a family of her own. In 1995 she had the first of three atopic pregnancies, a condition that routinely ends in miscarriage and can be dangerous to the mother. The records are unclear about whether those pregnancies were the result of artificial insemination.
A year later, she married Marcos Gutierrez, a produce manager. She also earned a psychiatric technician licence and began working at a psychiatric facility. It was there that she sustained injuries that led to the workers’ compensation claim.
On September 18th, 1999, Suleman intervened when 20 patients began rioting. During the melee, a female patient flipped over a heavy wooden desk that landed on Suleman’s back. She suffered a herniated disc injury that dogged her for years. She was eventually paid almost $170,000 in workers’ compensation benefits over an eight-year period that ended in December, when she resigned from her job.
In 2000 she separated from Gutierrez, a split she blamed, in part, on her withdrawal and lack of interest in life. “I didn’t want to keep bringing him down,” Suleman said. “I want him to move on with his life.” All the while, she continued trying to conceive. According to her mother, she used sperm from a friend, not Gutierrez.
When she became pregnant again in 2000, she was so nervous after multiple failed attempts that she did not want to talk about it to anyone, she told a psychologist who was evaluating her as part of her claim. “I thought I would jinx it,” Suleman told Dennis Nehamen. “It’s the most wonderful, best thing that’s ever happened in my life . . . I was still thinking it’s too good to be true . . .” During her pregnancy and after the birth of her first child, her records indicate that she experienced severe mood swings.
Despite her joy at being pregnant, she told Nehamen, “it was during that time I became depressed and I just wanted to die”. Nehamen said in his report that the depression was not related to her back injury but stemmed from “the powerful and uncontrollable emotions associated with her pregnancy – both the fear that it would end and her elation that it might be brought to fruition and she would realise her dream of having a child”. Another doctor disagreed and diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder.
After the baby was born, the emotional roller coaster continued. This time, she was by turns elated and despairing – and also terrified that the baby would be kidnapped or injured. “My husband or my mother has to take me almost everywhere,” she told one of the doctors.
Despite the separation from her husband in 2000, they attempted at least one reconciliation after the birth of the first baby. They split again but did not finally divorce until January 2008, court records show.
Her injuries grew worse as the result of a traffic accident in 2001, which occurred on the way home from a doctor’s appointment, she reported. Pregnancy had not helped either, doctors said. At one point, the pain was so intense, she couldn’t lift her three-month-old infant.
She later told a therapist that the baby “certainly has helped my spirits”.
“I have a child,” she said. “That’s the most wonderful thing in life.” Doctors declared her resilient and strong, though one did question her “capacity for psychological insight”. Over the next several years, Suleman had five more children, including a set of twins. According to her mother, Angela Suleman, and the NBC interview, all of them were fathered by the same sperm donor and by use of in-vitro fertilisation.
She also went back to college, earned a Bachelor of Science degree in child development and began pursuing a master’s degree in counselling.
Then, last year, with more embryos still frozen, she decided she wanted “just one more girl”, said her mother. Instead of one more baby, doctors told her she was pregnant with seven.
She carried them for 31 weeks, declining prevailing medical advice to reduce the number of embryos.
On delivery day, the surprises kept coming. She had eight babies. Now, the woman who said it was her dream to have a large family has 14 children. – (LA Times-Washington Post service)