8:57am Thursday 19th November 2009
By Andrew Mosley
I was chortling away while reading a section in Frankie Boyle’s autobiography about mum of 14 Nadya Suleman — who had eight kids in one go — when this programme about her popped up on screen.
Serendipity? No, it wasn’t very good, actually, although it did raise plenty of questions and, sadly, very few answers.
The first thing I came up with here was a very bad joke, unsuitable for publication in a family newspaper, but I think, sadly, that’s what Nadya Suleman has become. A joke.
Why would a woman who already has six kids feel the need to have more — eight more? We don’t really find out, but we do discover that Nadya has a very busy life, but does receive plenty of help in bringing up her offspring.
Nadya began IVF treatments in 2001, resulting in four single births and one fraternal twin birth — with four boys and two girls born between 2001 and 2006. Then came the octuplets.
The first thing you notice is just how damn noisy it is, with all the octuplets screaming at once and a few of the older ones joining in just for the hell of it.
Nadya, who lives, hilariously, in Madonna Lane somewhere in California, says that the birth of the kids with dozens of medical professionals on hand, was a nightmare. Well it would be. On leaving hospital she was given a taste of what was to come as she was mobbed by a scrum of photographers, followed by headlines justifying the ever-so-slightly unfair claim that she was the most hated mother in the world. Isn’t Katie Price a parent?
Nadya can hardly complain though, as she hasn’t exactly shunned the limelight, even going so far as to allow a reality TV show to be made in the US.
At one point, a court appoints a guardian to look after the money the family earns through media deals, meaning she can’t use it to pay for the huge costs of raising 14 children — dozens of tins of baby food, four gallons of milk a day, 700 nappies a week, three full-time paid staff costing $10,000 a month as well as various volunteers. The order is overturned on appeal, but the message is clear: everyone’s judging her.
And, of course, by watching this programme I couldn’t help but do the same. The problems are obvious and the question remains: “Was it selfish to have 14 children?”
You could say it’s got nothing to do with us, but when it’s a life played out in front of the TV cameras, it has.
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