Octomom’s Kids Speak Out In New Doc Focusing on Birth and Early Backlash

Part 1 of the 6-part Confessions of Octomom series premiered Monday night, with the first hour focusing on how Suleman came to have eight children at once in 2009 and the immediate media frenzy that followed.

As part of the doc, Suleman’s 14 children — who range in age from 23 to 16 — also speak out, sharing what it was like for them to be thrust into the spotlight, some of them from the day they were born.

Explaining why she decided to speak out now, Suleman explained she’s been “waiting a long time to tell my true story and I think the world is ready to see it. I have chosen to be out of the public eye, but to be able to have a voice. It’s time to speak truthfully.”

Added son Jeremiah, one of the amazing eight: “I want everyone to see the truth of what really happened, not the lies of the media, but the whole story.”

While the octuplets are who made her famous, Suleman had six children already before she welcomed that giant bunch at once. She introduced them all to viewers in the first hour of the doc, staring with eldest children Elijah, 23, and daughter Amerah, 22.

“The oldest, Elijah, he told me that God put them in my life to keep me safe. To watch me,” she said of her two eldest. “I joked for years, that’s mom, that’s dad. They’re like my parents, but they’re not.”

“She’s like a child in an adult body,” added Amerah.

“Joshua, he is by far the funniest person. Super smart and caring and a wonderful husband and dad,” Suleman continued, shifting to her 21-year-old son, before showing his baby girl, and he first granddaughter.

“Then there’s Aidan, who’s non-verbal, severely autistic,” Suleman added, referring to Joshua’s twin brother, before going on to introduce 18-year-old twins Caleb and Calyssa.

According to Suleman, she “always wanted to be a mom” and always wanted “a big family” — before quipping, “I think I may have overachieved with being a mom though.”

Both Amerah and Elijah gave some insight into their mom’s reasoning for wanting such a large family, with her daughter saying, “I think my mom told me, because she was an only child, she always wished she had siblings.”

Added Elijah: “She wanted brothers and sisters and she didn’t get that when she was younger. When she grew up and got to have a family of her own, she went all out.”

As Suleman tells it, she wanted one more child after her first six and had six embryos transferred via IVF. Her daughter Amerah explained that her mother started bleeding shortly after, before being told by technicians that they had “all expelled” and there were no more eggs. Suleman says she was then given the option to have six more embryos transferred to try again, which she did in a “sedated” state.

“I shouldn’t have been reflecting on something sedated,” she said in retrospect, saying that while she “can’t say I regret my kids, I love them,” she did regret the decision after learning 10 embryos took — meaning the other six did not expel and she was looking at a possible multiple birth.

“I felt so much guilt, what did I do to my kids? How am I going to spread myself thin with all of them? There’s no way,” she recalled thinking.

As Suleman listed off all eight of the octuplets’ names, she revealed they all have the same middle name, Angel — saying she chose it because “they were miracles,” and it’s easier for her to remember.

The eight kids include (top row above, l-r) Noah, Josiah, Isaiah, Nariyah and (bottom row above, l-r) Jeremiah, Makai, Maliyah and Jonah.

“When I was in elementary school, I remember telling all my friends, ‘These are all my siblings’ and then they’re like, ‘Why are you in the same grade?'” recalled Nariyah. “‘Because we were all born at the same time.’ They were like, ‘That’s not normal. Why would having eight kids at the same time be normal?’ I was like, ‘Wait, having my picture all over the internet, that’s not really normal.'”

When asked whether they felt “any different” from other kids, Maliyah said that wasn’t really the case … unless someone else points out their past.

“I don’t really feel different. Only if people make us feel different,” she explained. “If they bring that up, then I feel different from them. They make us feel like we’re a whole different species from them.”

When it was time to give birth, Suleman thought she was going to delivery seven children … but went on to welcome eight.

Reflecting on the birth, she said she “felt everything” because the epidural wasn’t strong enough for her size at the time. Though the ultrasound seemed to indicate seven children, another baby was in there.

“After the seventh, a resident went and examined the uterus and he felt a hand,” she recalled of “hidden” Baby H.

“He was the biggest. How do you miss a 3.5 pound baby? He was pretty big. So that was shocking,” she added — while Amerah exclaimed, “It was crazy.”

Though Suleman is adamant she tried to keep her situation private, details of the multiple birth — which marked the first time octuplets had survived — soon leaked to the press.

“I refused to do a press conference. I just wanted to go home,” said Suleman, who said that a presser happened at the hospital without her participation or knowledge. “They started doing interviews without my awareness, without my permission. They were trying to manage the chaos, but it just made everything worse.”

She said that as more and more people learned her name and as her story continued to blow up, people began calling the hospital, “threatening to kill the babies, to kill me.” She claimed that the hospital “needed me to go to a safe house,” took away her phone and “wouldn’t allow me to see my children unless” she did an interview, which they thought would quiet some of the noise.

“If I could go back in time I would never have done the first interview and I would have immediately sued the hospital,” she shared.

“I do remember when she was away for the hospital. We had a lot of time spent with grandma and grandpa, saw them a lot,” Joshua recalled of the time after his eight siblings were born.

Added Amerah: “It was a lot for them to take care of six kids when my mom was in the hospital. I know every day, my mom wished she could come home. But it was too dangerous, for her and the babies. I was anxious for my mom to come home.”

Sulman said she picked Ann Curry to interview her because she was one of the only women who offered; she added that she didn’t know anything about Curry beforehand and definitely wasn’t prepared for the sit-down.

“I felt horrible about myself. I gained 150 pounds … at that point, I was still heavier than normal. I had no idea what she was going to ask me. I had never done an interview before,” she shared.

“I didn’t want to do an interview. I wanted to see my kids. I missed them so much. I had so much guilt. I was never away from them before. I was foggy in my head. I really wasn’t lucid. I was also ripped open, and I was on Vicodin for pain,” she continued. “Can you imaging being interrogated while you had just given birth, all those hormones, you’re very depressed, in a state of shock. I was not there.”

She said that, at the time, she was “not in the frame of mind of people [who are] transparent and honest” and instead used “coping mechanisms” like deflection throughout the interview. “I did not take accountability because I’m not ready,” said Suleman, “It’s a blur to me, I don’t even remember.”

“They believed me doing the interview would reduce the death threats or hate. If anything, it exacerbated it. I woke up to the birth of Octomom,” she added, as headlines with her new nickname were shown on screen.

“That was like a bad word,” son Jeremiah said of the moniker, while Makai added, “We’re not supposed to say it out loud.” Joshua, however, quipped, “she might be saved in my contacts as Octomom.”

While she became a lightning rod for controversy, Suleman maintains there wouldn’t be as much backlash if she was married at the time — a time where stars like the Gosselins and Duggars were getting reality shows with their large families.

“I guarantee that a husband, if I were more conventional, a husband would have acted as a buffer in the public hatred,” she shared. “It would have been far less severe. If I had had a husband, there really wouldn’t have been much of a story. I never felt the need to be in a relationship with a man.”

While it’s been years — 16 of them, to be precise — since she was hounded by the paparazzi, it clearly had some long-lasting effects on her. To this day, Suleman covers up to an extreme degree whenever she goes outside. Footage showed her wearing layers upon layers of hats, glasses and face shields to go to the gym and grocery store.

“I was very consistent for decades, since I was in my early 20s wearing sunscreen, and I’m really into protecting my skin from the sun,” she said of covering up. “It for sure helps with my social anxiety. Nobody knows, they look and then they look away. People don’t want to look at stare.”

“I know I look nuts, this is gonna look strange. But I don’t really care,” she added. “Based on the past and being catapulted into the public eye, and having gone through what I went through, I became accustomed to hiding. I like that feeling. My family and I, we all value privacy. I value it immensely.”

When asked what they think about her “disguises,” one of her children, daughter Maliyah, said, “It’s just natural, I’m used to it. When she started doing it, I was like, what are you doing?”

The docuseries continues next Monday night on Lifetime.