Octuplets mother says she just wanted big family

The American mother of octuplets broke her silence today to reveal she had six embryos implanted, far more than fertility experts say is safe.

Nadya Suleman, 33, who is single, unemployed and has a history of clinical depression, already had six children by previous sessions of in vitro fertilisation but said she wanted a huge family.

Two of the latest embryos apparently divided in the womb to give her eight babies.

“I wanted them all transferred,” Ms Suleman said in an interview with NBC’s 'Today' show. “Those are my children, and that’s what was available and I used them. So, I took a risk. It’s a gamble. It always is.”

“It turned out perfectly,” she added.

The interview and previous health documents obtained by the Associated Press news agency lifted the veil of secrecy with which Ms Suleman shrouded herself after the births on January 26.

She has been harshly criticised for having a fertility procedure and risking multiple births when she already had the six children aged two to seven.

With in vitro fertilisation, doctors frequently implant more than one embryo to improve the odds that one will take. However, the US fertility industry has guidelines suggesting that no more than two embryos be implanted for women under 35.

Ms Suleman said she had six embryos implanted for each of the previous in vitro procedures that resulted in her other six children.

“All I wanted was children. I wanted to be a mom. That’s all I ever wanted in my life,” she said. “I love my children.

Ms Suleman said she struggled for seven years before finally giving birth to her first child.

According to state documents she told a doctor she had three miscarriages. Another doctor disputed that number, saying she had two ectopic pregnancies, a dangerous condition in which a fertilised egg implants somewhere other than in the uterus.

Ms Suleman said all 14 of her children were born by in vitro fertilisation from sperm donated by a friend.

Her publicist, Mike Furtney, said she was “feeling great” and looking forward to being reunited with her octuplets, who were born prematurely and are expected to remain in the hospital for several more weeks.

The state documents describe Ms Suleman becoming pregnant with her first child after a 1999 injury during a riot at a state mental hospital where she worked.

She feared she would lose the child and sank into an intense depression, according to a psychological evaluation.

“When you have a history of miscarriages, you think it will take a miracle,” she told a doctor. “I just wanted to die. I suspected I was pregnant but I thought, ’That’s ridiculous.”’

But the 2001 birth of the baby “helped my spirits,” she said.

More than 300 pages of documents were disclosed to The Associated Press following a public records request to the California Division of Workers’ Compensation.

They reveal that Ms Suleman collected more than €114,000 in disability payments between 2002 and 2008 for the work injury, which she said left her in near-constant pain and helped end her marriage.

Details of the documents were reported the same day that NBC released excerpts of her first interview since giving birth.

In the interview she described her childhood as an only child as “pretty dysfunctional.”

In the state documents, however, doctors quoted her as indicating she had a happy childhood. She told them she was an above-average student, had many friends and stayed out of trouble. She said both her parents were loving and supportive.

According to the state documents, Ms Suleman was injured in September 1999, when a riot involving nearly two dozen patients broke out in the women’s ward of the Metropolitan State Hospital , where she worked as a psychiatric technician.

As she was helping other staff members restrain a patient, a desk thrown at her by another patient hit her in the back. It damaged her spine and left her complaining of headaches and intense pain throughout her lower body for years.

Ms Suleman attributed the lingering pain in part to the break-up of her marriage to Marcos Gutierrez, whom she wed in 1996 and divorced in 2008.

She told a psychiatrist the bouts of depression she was suffering as a result of her injury were unfair to her husband.

“I don’t want to keep bringing him down,” she said. “I want him to move on with his life.”