That’s What She Said

The media has been all abuzz lately talking about Nadya Suleman and her octuplets who were born on January 26th of this year. These eight babies bring her total number of children to fourteen, all under the age of eight and all conceived via in vitro fertilization with the sperm donated by a friend (allegedly her ex-husband). In addition to giving birth to eight premature babies, one of her first six kids is autistic. I’m not saying that having an autistic child is a bad thing, but it is a big undertaking even if you only have one or two kids, let alone fourteen. Apparently, before she had her first child she suffered three miscarriages (two or all of them may have been ectopic pregnancies) before turning to other fertility methods.

Whatever your personal views of alternative fertility methods are, you are entitled to them. I’m not saying this to insult anyone who has done any of these procedures or knows someone who has, but for the most part I find them ridiculous. Obviously, there are several different levels of fertility treatments. On the sane side of the spectrum is to increase your level of hormones to help your chances of carrying your pregnancy to term. I don’t see anything wrong with that. On the opposite end of the scale are fertility drugs and treatments that result in people having a litter of children. Another procedure I heard about on NPR a few years ago dealt with a type of in vitro that would allow the parents to choose the gender of their child. That’s a little too Gattica for my tastes.

Before I get to my opinions on Nadya Suleman, I would like to state first and foremost that I don’t have a problem with big families. If you are able to financially and emotionally support them, then more power to you.

Whatever, dude, it’s your vagina.

That being said, I think that the mindset of “I HAVE to have kids that are my own flesh and blood” is kind of selfish. I understand wanting to have biological children–I know my fiance and I plan to try someday. However, if we can’t have kids naturally, we’ll adopt. A parent is not defined as someone who contributes an egg or sperm–it’s the person who raises a kid. An adopted child is as much yours as the one you popped out yourself.

Suleman’s doctor reportedly implanted six fertilized embryos during in vitro fertilization (IVF) and the standard is to do three. He’s currently under investigation and rightly so–clearly this woman is nuts but isn’t there some sort of screening process? I would think that before a woman is artificially inseminated there needs to be some kind of background check to make sure she’s stable and can financially support a kid. What blows my mind is that this doctor would consent to implanting another six embryos when she already had six children she couldn’t really afford.

In terms of meeting what I think are reasonable standards for having a lot of kids (being financially and emotionally able to care for them), I don’t think Nadya Suleman fits these criteria. Obviously I can’t speak for the emotional side since I have not met this woman, but her finances are no secret to the public. She is an unemployed graduate student who has spent nearly all of the $170,000 she’s collected in disability money over the last six years on in vitro fertalization treatments. IVF is not a cheap process and can cost upwards of $10,000 for a single session.

A much cheaper means of conception.

Even though she already has six children, Suleman doesn’t seem to grasp how expensive children can be. She is not currently concerned about her finances because, as she told Anne Curry in an interview, “I know I’ll be able to afford them when I’m done with my schooling.” However, she is studying to be a social worker and the starting salary for that is around $45,000 per year. That’s barely condusive to raising one or two kids, let alone fourteen.

It seems that her alternate plan is to start whoring out her story to the media. Supposedly she is letting Oprah know that she is available for interviews at the low, low price of two million dollars.

Time to earn mama some easy money, kids!
Or, you know, finish developing your eyes.

Suleman has also set up a website where you can donate money to her and her octuplets. On the one hand, I don’t want the octuplets to suffer any more than they already have and are going to with her as a mother. But I also don’t think this woman should be encouraged. You can view her website here .

Who might you ask is caring for all these kids while mom is trying for her media tour? Her own parents, who are having financial difficulties of their own and think their daughter needs to stay away from needles bearing hormones.

As for the fate of the octuplets, I hope that they can make it through their stay in the hospital and are able to survive. It’s not their fault their mom is batshit crazy. I do hope, however, that with all this media attention that someone will intervene and get this mother some help because it seems like she needs, at the very least, a whole lot of therapy. I also think that women and couples wanting to undergo IVF need to go through a more thorough screening process to keep irresponsible people from having litters of children. In some cases, certain people just shouldn’t be allowed to have kids.

Warning: Do not allow to breed.

P.S. If you have a strong stomach, check out a photo courtesy of TMZ.com of Nadya Suleman eight days before she gave birth.

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