LOS ANGELES — The mother who gave birth to octuplets identified a Beverly Hills fertility clinic that she said provided in-vitro fertilization for all 14 of her children.
Nadya Suleman said in an interview that aired today on NBC’s “Today” show that she used the West Coast IVF Clinic for all of her pregnancies.
Video from 2006 that was aired today on KTLA-TV shows Dr. Michael Kamrava from the clinic treating Suleman and discussing the implantation process.
Suleman did not name her doctor in the NBC interview but said the same doctor helped her conceive all 14 of her children at the clinic.
Without identifying the doctor, the Medical Board of California said last week it was looking into the matter to see if there was a “violation of the standard of care” for implanting so many embryos.
The medical board’s Web site lists no previous actions taken against the doctor by the state.
There was no answer to a telephone call placed before business hours to the clinic, and Kamrava did not immediately return a pager message.
Suleman, 33, of Whittier already had six children when she gave birth on Jan. 26 to octuplets.
Medical ethicists have expressed shock that a doctor would implant so many embryos. National guidelines put the norm at two to three embryos for a woman of Suleman’s age in order to lessen the health risks to the mother and the chances of multiple births.
Suleman said she had six embryos implanted for each of her five previous pregnancies. The octuplets were a surprise result of her last set of six embryos, she said, explaining she had expected twins at most.
Suleman told “Today” anchor Ann Curry that her doctor “did nothing wrong” and said the doctor had warned her of possible complications from the pregnancy and risks to the development of the babies.
She also acknowledged being “fixated” on having children.
“I know now that I may or may not have really deep down wanted that many siblings” for my six other children, Suleman said.
Curry then asked if Suleman “deluded” herself into thinking her six children wanted a bigger family.
“Not really deluded myself, but I knew that’s what I wanted,” Suleman said.
On Sunday, Suleman’s mother, Angela Suleman, seemed to contradict her daughter’s account, telling a Web site the fertility specialist who helped her daughter give birth to the octuplets was different from the one who aided in the birth of her first six children.
In an interview with celebrity news Web site RadarOnline.com, Angela Suleman, whose daughter and grandchildren live with her, said she and her husband pleaded with Nadya’s first fertility doctor not to treat their daughter again, so Nadya found another doctor to work with.
“I’m really angry about that,” Angela Suleman said of the doctor’s decision to perform the procedure.
“She already has six beautiful children, why would she do this?” Angela Suleman said. “I’m struggling to look after her six. We had to put in bunk beds, feed them in shifts and there’s children’s clothing piled all over the house.”
The Web site posted photographs from inside Angela Suleman’s disheveled three-bedroom home. Heaps of clothing pour from an open closet door and a carpeted bedroom, where a bedsheet serves as a curtain, is cluttered with cribs.
Angela Suleman said that Nadya’s boyfriend was the biological father of all 14 children, but that she refused to marry him.
“He was in love with her and wanted to marry her,” she said. “But Nadya wanted to have children on her own.”
Nadya Suleman’s publicist, Mike Furtney, did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment late Sunday.
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