Two octuplets go home from hospital

Two of the world’s longest-surviving octuplets have gone home from hospital, greeted by a crush of photographers, neighbours and curious onlookers gathered in a cul-de-sac where the mother will raise her 14 children.

Nadya Suleman was sitting with her babies in the back seat of a car which waded through the crowd and went straight into the garage of her new four-bedroom, three-bath home in La Habra, about 25 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

Many photographers shoved and pushed as their cameras flashed, clinging to the vehicle until the garage door closed. The door appeared to have been damaged, with dents visible on the outside.

Suleman, an unemployed divorced mother, gave birth to the octuplets nine weeks prematurely on January 26 in Bellflower. She already had six children, aged two to seven.

The octuplets, who at birth weighed from 1lb 8oz to 3lbs 4oz, spent their first seven weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center. The first two babies to be discharged, Noah and Isaiah, are each about 5lbs and are able to bottle feed, the hospital said.

The other two girls and four boys continue gaining weight and will be released another day, the hospital said.

“This is a happy moment for everyone – the family, physicians, nurses and entire NICU staff,” said Dr Mandhir Gupta, a neonatologist at the medical centre. “It is always rewarding whenever a premature infant goes home as a healthy baby.”

Dozens of media and others waited for hours outside the home for Suleman and the babies to arrive. Various vehicles trickled in early in the evening, some of them carrying the octuplets’ older siblings, Suleman’s mother and carers.

The octuplets will require around-the-clock care from at least two carers. Angels in Waiting, a non-profit group of nurses which specialises in caring for fragile infants and children, estimates the babies will need a combined 64 feedings a day.

The babies’ historic births were initially met with curiosity and celebration, but a backlash against Suleman grew as the public learned that the 33-year-old mother had few means to support her brood.

All 14 of her children were conceived through in vitro fertilisation at the West Coast IVF Clinic run by Dr Michael Kamrava, with sperm from an unidentified friend, Suleman has said.