Nadya Suleman (USA) claimed headlines across the world on 26 January 2009 when she gave birth to six boys and two girls at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Bellflower, California, USA. The babies were conceived with the aid of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) treatment and were nine weeks premature when they were delivered by Caesarean section.

Suleman was born in Fullerton, California. She is the only child of Angela Victoria (born 1940) and Assyrian Iraqi American Edward Doud Suleman (born 1942). Her parents married in Las Vegas in 1974, and divorced in 1999.

She held a psychiatric technician license, and worked as a psychiatric technician at Metropolitan State Hospital, where her back was injured while at work. After graduating from Nogales High School in 1993, she attended California State University, Fullerton (CSUF) and received a Bachelor of Science degree in child and adolescent development in 2006. Suleman returned to CSUF to pursue a master’s degree in counseling, leaving the program in 2008. She is known as Octomom in the media, is an American woman who came to international attention when she gave birth to octuplets in January 2009. The Suleman octuplets are only the second full set of octuplets to be born alive in the United States and, one week after their birth, surpassed the previous worldwide survival rate for a complete set of octuplets set by the Chukwu octuplets in 1998. The circumstances of their high order multiple birth have led to controversy in the field of assisted reproductive technology as well as an investigation by the Medical Board of California of the fertility specialist involved.
Nadya has 14 children in total.