Nadya was 21 years old and divorced when she began IVF in 1997, using money from a $165,000 settlement she got from suffering a back injury at her job.
She had her first child, a son named Elijah, in 2001, and her second, a daughter named Amerah, in 2002. She continued doing IVF, getting pregnant three more times, once with fraternal twins named Calyssa and Caleb.
Nadya still had 12 embryos left when, in 2008, Beverly Hills fertility specialist Dr. Michael Kamrava transferred all of them into her uterus.
The pair have differing stories on whose idea it was to use all 12 embryos at once, but in 2011, Dr. Kamrava lost his United States medical license, according to the New York Times.
‘I was misled by my doctor,’ Suleman asserted, saying she thought she would have only two children.
‘He told me we lost six embryos, he said they were expelled out of me, and that’s why he wanted to implant another six.’
When Nadya gave birth to the octuplets at 31 weeks in 2009, 46 doctors and nurses were on hand to perform the C-section, delivering six boys and two girls weighing between 1 lb. 8 oz. and 3 lbs. 4 oz.
The siblings became the longest surviving set of octuplets to be born in the U.S.
Now, Nadya’s younger kids are featured predominantly in her social media photos, but she will occasionally post pictures of the older ones with their permission.
Earlier this year, she opened up about her family’s healthy lifestyle, sharing that 13 out of her 14 kids are vegan.
She explained that she is a ‘predominantly raw, ethical vegan’ and her older children have continued to follow her eating habits by choice.
Source:dailymail.co.uk, mirror.co.uk
