'Everything I do revolves around my children'

Although she talks about returning to college to finish her master’s degree, Nadya Suleman has no job and no income save for supplemental security income payments for three of her children and $490 a month in food stamps. Yet, when Suleman learned she was carrying at least seven fetuses, she was delighted.

“I do believe that children are all blessings from God. And I feel it's all positive; it's a positive experience,” Suleman told NBC’s Ann Curry in an exclusive interview Tuesday on Dateline NBC.

When news broke on Jan. 26 that a California woman had given birth to octuplets, the reaction from the public was overwhelmingly positive. But in less than two weeks, as word got out that Suleman was a single and unemployed woman with six other children under the age of 8, public opinion branded her, in Curry’s words, “the most vilified mother in America.”

“Why is it responsible for a single woman without a job with six kids to bring eight more children into this world?” Curry asked, echoing the question that so many Americans are asking.

“I personally do not believe I'm irresponsible,” the 33-year-old woman told Curry. “Everything I do revolves around my children.”

In segments of the interview that ran on the TODAY show on Monday and Tuesday, Suleman had said that she does not get welfare despite the food stamps she gets or the government payments for three children with varying disabilities — a son who is autistic, another child with ADHD and a third who is developmentally delayed in learning to speak. She also said she is able to provide for her children.

Tuesday night on Dateline, Suleman said that she is also in debt.

“How much in debt do you have now?” Curry asked.

“Probably 50. Close to 50,” she said.

“Thousand dollars?” Curry responded.

Suleman nodded.

“How is that not like welfare?” Curry pressed on.

“Oh, no,” Suleman protested. “These are student loans. You consolidate the loans, you pay it back. We don't pay back welfare.”

“Okay, so you don't have a job, Your students loans have run out… So you're saying you have no income coming in?” Curry summarized.

“At the moment, no,” Suleman said.

“Are you not being selfish?”

“No, I'm not being selfish. I don't believe I'm selfish in any way,” the mother of 14 said.

“But how is it not selfish to bring children in the world that you cannot actually afford?” Curry asked again.

“Because I know I'll be able to afford them when I'm done with my schooling,” Suleman said.

Seeking a 'bond that I lacked'
Suleman was born in Fullerton, Calif., in 1975. Her mother was a high school teacher. Her dad was a restaurateur and later a realtor. She had no siblings and said that she felt deprived in childhood, describing her family as “dysfunctional” and her mother, with whom she lives, as emotionally distant. From an early age, she said, she wanted to have a huge family when she grew up.

It was, she said, about “having that bond that I lacked.”

She married at 21 and had one ectopic pregnancy – a potentially life-threatening condition – that was terminated. She learned she had various problems that would prevent her from having children except through in vitro fertilization.

“I went through about seven years of trying — through artificial insemination and through medication. And all of which was unsuccessful,” Suleman said. “I had so many reproductive problems from fibroids. I have also had lesions in my fallopian tubes. It turned out that my tubes were scarred. So the only option left over was IVF, a procedure where they remove your eggs, and then they take the sperm, culture it in a dish and then transfer it back.”

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