Octomom Nadya Suleman and six of her famous octuplets, born in January, have been photographed together for the first time on the cover of In Touch Weekly.
If she has her way, it won’t be the last.
In the photo, a sort of normal-looking Nadya Suleman appears with sleeping newborns Isaiah, Noah, Nariah, Maliah, Makai and Jeremiah. The other two babies, Jonah and Josiah, are stable but remain in neonatal intensive care in Bellflower, Calif.
“They need a little more time to develop, grow and tolerate food,” Kaiser Permanante Medical Center spokeswoman Beth Trombley told the celeb news mag.
The magazine details the conflict between Octomom, who wants to raise her 14 children alone and hopefully on a reality series coming soon, and the “concerns” of TV blowhard shrink Dr. Phil McGraw and publicity hound lawyer Gloria Allred.
According to reports, Nadya Suleman is interested in starring in a reality show as soon as the final two octuplets, Jonah and Josiah, leave the hospital.
The magazine quotes a source who says a deal is in place. “It’s about Nadya trying to raise 14 children while looking for love,” the insider explains.
That sort of shameless fame-whoring has just about everyone up in arms.
“These babies should be placed in foster care,” Gloria Allred, an attorney for Angels in Waiting, which provided free nurses to Nadya, says. “There they would receive the individualized care that the babies need and deserve.”
“I felt like a stranger in my own home,” the 33-year-old single mother, who has six older children, says. “I felt ostracized. I felt excluded.”
But Allred said that Suleman, who was the victim of vandalism outside her home this week, is far more interested in cameras than babies.
“There’s only a few hours beyond when cameras were rolling that she actually came into the nursery to care for her babies, and that’s wrong,” Allred said.
If she does receive her own reality show (heaven forbid), it will be on one condition: no more calling her Octomom. Nadya Suleman is believed to hate the moniker, and has been assured it won’t be part of the reality series’ title.
The In Touch article also addresses questions about Suleman’s sanity.
Some of her neighbors in La Habra, Calif., are convinced she needs psychiatric help. “I really can’t believe anyone can be that screwed up in the head,” Debra Collins said.
Adds another neighbor, Gloria Beck, “The woman is completely nuts. She thinks she’s famous. She doesn’t know that people are laughing at her, that she’s a freak.”