…For Nadya Suleman, the woman who gave birth to a litter of humans 10 days ago. While she’s returned home to her first (!) six kids, her eight babies remain in the hospital, having been born more than two months early. Their health doesn’t seem to be in immediate danger, but as preemies, they’ll be susceptible to a whole host of developmental problems.
She always wanted a huge family, Nadya tells Ann Curry in an interview that will air on Monday and Tuesday on Dateline and Today.
Not to put too fine a point on it: Nadya strikes me as batshit crazy. Certifiable. Loony. Get out the straight jacket. I’m just sayin’.
I’m trying to do the math here. Let’s say Nadya’s brood of 14 is awake 16 hours a day. If CrazyMom devoted every single minute of those 16 hours to looking after the kids, each child would exclusively get one hour and seven and a half minutes of care per day.
Parents are way too much up in their kids’ biz these days—on his fourth birthday, I plan to give The Kid a knife, a Metrocard and pants and let him fend for himself—but c’mon, an hour? For everything? I hope she sets up a feeding trough in the kitchen and a poo catch in the bathroom. In their expansive three-bedroom house, of course. Jesus. People jammed into Lower East Side tenements in the late 19th century had more leg room.
Here’s more rudimentary math: she’s 33. Her oldest child is 7. According to the L.A. Times story linked above, she tried for seven years to get pregnant before turning to IVF. (Whether those attempts to conceive were through old-school methods or by artificial insemination is unclear.) Which means her quest for a “huge family” began when she was all of 19 or so.
Nadya must’ve been the loneliest girl in the history of the world. Maybe that would drive anyone mad.
I really cannot get my head around this! And this “batshit crazy” person is the guardian of 14 kids? Sad and strange and scary…
I am verging on obsessed with this whole story… What is next for these poor children?
One would think the doctors involved would have clued into batshit crazy woman and refused to participate? If medical personnel can refuse to participate in abortions can’t they also refuse littering? I realize once the eggs are implanted you can’t force a woman to cull them down to a reasonable few, but, shit man, doesn’t anybody ask a few questions before loading the turkey baster?
Ha ha, “littering.” Nice neologism, Gill! Though you seriously grossed me out with the turkey baster.
I’ve been kind of obsessed too. It’s also been interesting to witness this trans-ideological, across-the-board disgust. From the left to the right, prolife to prochoice, religious to secular, pretty much everyone is in agreement that there is a lot way-crazy wrong about this situation.
Hey, maybe Nadya has brought us all together in a Kumbaya moment of moral outrage!