The first of the octuplets, Ebuka, was born on December 8, 15 weeks premature. The remainder were born by Caesarean section on December 20, 13 weeks premature. The smallest of the octuplets, Odera, died on December 27, a week after birth.
Within a month of being born, all remaining 7 babies were breathing independently without any support from oxygen. A few years ago The Houston Chronicle did an update on the family and reported that the 7 babies were thriving and growing like normal children.
"It's not easy, but I love them all." Ed, father of new Octuplet mom Nadya Suleman after being asked by the media how does he feel having 14 grandkids.
CBS News reported Friday that the mother of eight newborns, who already had six children, filed for bankruptcy and abandoned her home less than two years ago. She hasn't been identified publicly yet, though CBS News described her as a woman in her 30s who lives with her parents. The woman's mother revealed to the Los Angeles Times that her daughter already had six children before seeking fertility treatment, though she had no idea she would become pregnant with so many babies. Britain's Sun newspaper reported that the mother works in a fertility clinic. The grandmother said she had multiple embryos implanted last year and declined to abort any of them. The hospital, Kaiser Permanente in Bellflower, Calif., did not release the mother's name, but the Sun, without citing sources, identified her as 33-year-old Nadya Suleman. She does not appear to have a husband. CBS News reported that the woman's father is Iraqi and is heading back to his native country to earn money for the growing family. The babies were born nine weeks premature, adding to their health risks, the Associated Press reported. Because of the risks, doctors generally advise against births with so many multiples — though the decision is left up to the mother. Stress comes along with any pregnancy, but giving birth to octuplets could be overwhelming, according to Dr. Charles Sophy, medical director of Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, "Any new parent is going to be under stress and multiple that by 8, it's a lot of stress," Sophy told FOXNews.com. "Hopefully the upfront work and due diligence was done." Sophy said the most pressing concern for Suleman should be getting the youngsters on a schedule. "Eating, sleeping and bathing are the key areas to get scheduled," he said. "The same goes for mom and dad. Parents need to make sure they're whole or else they won't be valuable to their children." Sophy said the expense of raising 14 children will likely be prohibitive, citing studies that estimate it costs roughly $2.5 million to raise a child to adulthood. Using that math, raising 14 children would cost roughly $35 million. "And that's basic stuff," he said. "That doesn't include swimming lessons and things like that. It's very costly and hopefully the planning that needs to be done was done upfront." Source: Fox News We will release a statement on Monday to the media worldwide on our opinion via our Publicist.
Reports are circulating that cast an unflattering light on the miracle mom who gave birth to octuplets in California Monday.
Officers responding to 911 calls placed by the man, Ervin A. Lupoe, and by a television station to which Mr. Lupoe had sent a fax around 8:30 a.m., found seven bodies in a house in Wilmington, a working-class neighborhood near the Port of Los Angeles.
A police spokesman said the bodies were identified as Mr. Lupoe; his wife, Ana; their 8-year-old daughter and two sets of twins (5-year-old girls and 2-year-old boys).
Mr. Lupoe had telephoned and sent a fax to KABC-TV that indicated “he was despondent over a job situation and he saw no reasonable way out,” said Lt. John Romero, a police spokesman.
The two-page, typewritten letter made clear he was going to kill his family and himself. The station quickly called 911 to report the letter and then posted it on the station Web site after the bodies were discovered.
The letter said Mr. Lupoe and his wife had worked as medical technicians at a Kaiser Permanente hospital in West Los Angeles, but recently lost their jobs after a dispute with an administrator.
The administrator, it said, had asked them on an unspecified day why they had come to work, and then added, “You should have blown your brains out.”
Two days after the confrontation, the letter said, the Lupoes lost their jobs and began planning their deaths and those of their children.
“Why leave the children to a stranger?” Mr. Lupoe said his wife had asked. “So, here we are,” he wrote.
Kaiser Permanente officials issued a statement confirming the couple had worked at their hospital in West Los Angeles but would not say when they had lost their jobs or provide other details. “We are deeply saddened to hear of the deaths of the Lupoe family,” the statement said.
Although the police are treating the case as a murder-suicide, Deputy Chief Kenneth Garner said the police were still sorting through a discrepancy.
Contrary to his fax and reported call to the television station, the man told a 911 operator he had arrived home and found his family dead, Deputy Chief Garner said. But investigators found a revolver next to Mr. Lupoe’s body, the only weapon in the home, he said.
The police said they found the bodies of the three daughters next to their father in a front bedroom upstairs. The boys were with their mother in a back bedroom on the same floor.
“A man who recently lost his job allowed the despair to put him over the edge,” said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who held a news conference outside the house. “Unfortunately, this has been an all-too-common story in the last few months. But that does not and should not lead people to resort to desperate measures.”
A man killed his ex-wife, her parents and friends at a Christmas party in West Covina last month after losing his job. In October, a 45-year-old father of three shot and killed his wife and children in their Porter Ranch home after describing financial stress in a suicide note.
Mayor Villaraigosa urged Los Angeles residents experiencing financial stress to talk to friends and neighbors and seek counseling “to get back on their feet and keep their families afloat.”
Cecilia Yvar, 68, whose grandson often played with the Lupoes’ 5-year-old twins, said the family moved to the neighborhood four years ago. The Lupoes added a second story to their home last year, Ms. Yvar said, and landscaping to their backyard.
“Maybe too much money, too much stress,” she said while wiping away tears.
Ms. Yvar said the couple kept to themselves, but greeted their neighbors warmly each day. On Sunday, she said, they appeared unhappy as they walked together outside.
Yolanda and Oscar Lopez, who have lived in the area three months, said they had seen the Lupoes in the neighborhood.
“There’s so much pressure from the economy and people out of work and stuff,” Mr. Lopez, 28, said. “But adults, they know there are other options. You don’t have to do this.”
UPDATE: She is not married and it's her dad going to Iraq.
Her husband is a contract worker in Iraq and she underwent fertility treatment but did not want to reduce her fetuses and she has six other kids ranging from age 2 to 7. Busy like me!! Click to enlarge my kid's pictures.
"The Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday that Angela Suleman said her daughter had the embryos implanted last year, resulting in the eight births.
"They all happened to take," Suleman told the Times. "I looked at those babies. They are so tiny and so beautiful."
The woman declined to have the number of embryos reduced when she discovered she was carrying multiples, the Times reported. The six older siblings range from ages 7 to 2, according to the newspaper.
Suleman said she was concerned about her daughter's homecoming because her husband, a contract worker, is due to return to Iraq.
In the meantime, the mother, who remains unidentified, appealed for privacy while she recovers from giving birth, medical officials said Thursday.
In her written statement delivered by Dr. Karen Maples of the Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center in California, the woman who delivered eight babies in five minutes said she would soon make public the details of her "miraculous experience."
"We understand that you are all curious about the arrival of the octuplets, and we appreciate your respect for our family's privacy," she said."
December 22, 1998
Web posted at: 10:40 p.m. EST (0340 GMT)
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Last year it was seven babies. This year it's eight.
As the mother of the world's first known set of surviving octuplets was moved out of intensive care Tuesday, doctors and ethicists are raising more and more questions about the increase in multiple births.
The mother of the octuplets, Nkem Chukwu, is in stable condition at Houston's St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital after undergoing surgery Monday to stop internal bleeding.
All but one of the eight babies -- six girls and two boys -- remain on ventilator systems. All are in critical but stable condition, and doctors remained optimistic about their chances Tuesday, said Leonard Weisman, the doctor treating the newborns.
The mother had taken fertility drugs. When it was discovered she was carrying multiple fetuses, she was offered the opportunity to abort some of them, but she declined for "religious and personal" purposes, Weisman said.
"We've continued to support her decision and to care for the babies that are born," he said.
Professionals in the field of reproduction say fertility drugs can be difficult to control.
"There are a lot of physicians trying to deal with this problem and decrease the likelihood that this will happen," said Dr. Keith Eddleman of Mount Sinai-NYU Medical Center in New York. "The problem is the technology is not perfect. They can't control the number of children they have."
Ethicists say being pregnant with so many babies forces women to make difficult moral and ethical decisions.
"They have to choose between three conflicting values -- their own health, in having to carry so many fetuses; the health of their fetuses; and the moral values of whether or not you have to abort one or more of those fetuses," said Larry Gostin, of Georgetown University.
Doctors say the generally healthy McCaughey septuplets were the exception rather than the rule. Many premature babies, such as the Houston octuplets, are much smaller and face greater dangers.
"Many of these children are going to have profound handicaps throughout their lives -- both physical and mental handicaps," Gostin said.
Ethicists say the public needs stricter guidelines. But many reproductive experts say it's difficult to pass regulations to prevent this kind of pregnancy. They add that until fertility drugs are perfected, high-multiple pregnancies will sometimes be unavoidable -- and if a woman chooses not to abort some of the fetuses, there is nothing anyone can do.
Source: CNN Archives
In a statement issued though Kaiser Permanente hospital in Bellflower, Calif., the anonymous mother says:
"We understand that you are all curious about the arrival of the octuplets and we appreciate your respect for our family's privacy. Please know, in our own time, we will share additional details about this miraculous experience.
"The babies continue to grow strong every day and make good progress. My family and I are ecstatic about all of their arrivals. Needless to say, the eighth was a surprise to us all, but a blessing as well.
"Thank you to the extra special nurses and hospital staff for their tireless support. Ever since I came to Kaiser after becoming pregnant, I've been grateful for the phenomenal medical team responsible for the extraordinary care that my babies and I received.
"Finally, we thank all of you for the positive thoughts, prayers and generosity."
1998
Also, Soumada Khan at KTLA Channel 5 in Bellflower, CA, Madison Park at CNN.com, Ed Pilkington at the Guardian newspapers, U.K, Lila Merideth at Associated Press TV, Shannon Burtnowski at NBC Nightly News, all the hotel staff, limo drivers, airport staff and studio employees and all we couldn't mention. Special thanks to our DYNAMIC Publicist Kemi Olunloyo (left) of Keminications Media/PR, THANK YOU!!! See you all at the world tour destinations. 
Thanks to fertility treatments, multiple births have become more common in the last few decades, according to statistics. The most recent case, which astonished the medical world, is that of a woman in California who gave birth to the second set of octuplets in the history of the United States at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in the Los Angeles suburb of Bellflower on Monday. The babies, six boys and two girls, are doing well, according to the doctors dealing with the case. However, they will remain in incubators for the following six weeks, as they were born nine weeks before term. The first set of octuplets was born in Houston, Texas, in 1998, six girls and two boys. Unfortunately, one of girls died days after birth because of heart and lung failure. The other seven recently celebrated their tenth birthday. Their parents, Nkem Chukwu and Iyke Louis Udobi said they are more than grateful to see their children healthy and active. Besides the excitement of such an event, it is common knowledge that multiple births are risky, as the uterus is capable of carrying and feeding a certain number of foetuses. Therefore, multiple births increase the odds of having babies born before term, which as well increase the risk of developing health problems and dying. In fact, the more premature the babies are delivered, the greater risks they have of dying or suffering serious lifelong problems, according to Dr. Norbert Gleicher, medical director at the Center for Human Reproduction in New York. “The media should not make this into heroic case,” Gleicher said about the octuplets in California. “This is anything but a heroic case. This is very bad medicine,” he added, referring to the fact that medical guidelines limit the number of embryos implanted at the same time to two or three at most. Multiple births pose risks for the mother as well, as she is more likely to develop gestational diabetes, hypertension and preeclampsia.
Source: Anna Boyd E-Flux Media
The unnamed mother is still recovering in hospital after the arrival of the six boys and two girls on Monday.
All eight are doing well and breathing on their own at the Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower Medical Center in southern California, despite being born nine weeks premature.
As four of the babies started bottle feeding, speculation grew over whether the multi-birth was natural.
Two people claiming to be grandparents of the octuplets rang a radio station and disclosed that the mother had six other children.
Medical experts said questions would be asked if it emerged that a woman with six children received fertility treatment.
Michael Tucker, a researcher on fertility treatment in America, told reporters: "If a medical practitioner had anything to do with it there's some degree in inappropriate medical therapy there.
"When we see something like this in the general fertility world, it gives us the heebie jeebies."
Forty eight hours after their birth, the mother had still not been able to hold any of the babies, who were born weighing between one pound, eight ounces and three pounds, four ounces.
In lieu of names, the babies have been given letters ranging from A to H, in the order of their birth.
The babies' incubators were being kept near one another in the same room for bonding, according to Miriam Khoury, clinical director of inpatient obstetrical nursing at the hospital.
America's first live-birth octuplets were born three months premature in Houston in 1998.
The smallest baby, who was born at 10.3 ounces, died of heart and lung failure a week after being born but the others survived.
Mother Nkem Chukwu and father Iyke Louis Udobi had used fertility drugs in the pregnancy.
It is also being reported that the new mom is Hispanic. Once again congrats to her!
UPDATE: Her name is Nadya Suleman, a 33 year old divorcee and a single mom.
Source: Telegraph.co.uk
"If you can take care of one, you can take care of eight.".......Iyke Louis, father of the Chukwu Octuplets during their interview in NYC at the Associated Press headquarters, January 28th 2009.
Hello!
I had a question. Does Ebuka really celebrate her birthday at the same time as the other Octuplets? If so, have you always celebrated their birthdays together or did you start at one point because she was feeling left out?
Yours,
Rebecca
Thanks for your question Rebecca. It's an age old one everyone asks. Ebuka was the first octuplet to be delivered but not on the same day as the others. She was born 12/8/98 and the rest came on 12/20/08. We always observe her birthday and celebrate everyone together on the 20th.
After we left NBC, we went over to the AP studios for the family interview starring the kids. The Octuplets get their chance to finally talk. Thanks to Bonnie Goach, Lila Merideth and Sarah.
"I wanna give them advice to keep praying so that their children can live."
.....Ebuka Chukwu Louis, the first born of the world's first surviving Chukwu Octuplets from Houston Texas on the Today show 1/28/09 after Anchor/Host Meredith Vieira asked the children what advise they had for the new Octuplet family in Bellflower California. Ebuka was born 12 days before the rest on December 8th 1998 while the others were born on the 20th.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
"It's too early."
Screenshots via NBC's Today Show
The parents of the Chukwu Octuplets have been on several interviews all day today speaking to BBC, SKY news, CNN Radio, CNN.com, BBC World, BBC-TV, BBC Radio, ABC's Good Morning America and more to mention. All videos and audio clips are coming but tune in to TODAY at 7.30am 1/28/09.
1998 with Diane Sawyer and dad Iyke Louis
Screenshots via GMA on ABC
Nadya Suleman had 6 boys and 2 girls 1/26/09 while Nkem Chukwu had six girls and 2 boys 12/8/98 and 12/20/98.
BELLFLOWER, Calif. (AP) — A woman gave birth to eight babies in Southern California on Monday, the world's second live-born set of octuplets.
The mother, who was not identified, gave birth to six boys and two girls weighing between 1 pound, 8 ounces and 3 pounds, 4 ounces, doctors at Kaiser Permanante Bellflower Medical Center told The Associated Press.
The hospital had scheduled a Caesarean section for seven babies, but doctors were surprised by the eighth.
(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
"My eyes were wide," Dr. Karen Maples said, explaining her reaction to the last birth.
Doctors said the babies were born nine weeks premature but are in stable condition. Two newborns were placed on ventilators and a third needs oxygen.
Forty-six hospital staff and four delivery rooms were used for the births. After a baby was born, staff rushed the newborn into another room and waited for the next, the hospital said. But despite weeks of preparation, doctors did not expect the eighth child.
"It is quite easy to miss a baby when you're anticipating seven babies," said Dr. Harold Henry, chief of maternal and fetal medicine at the hospital. "Ultrasound doesn't show you everything."
Kaiser spokeswoman Myra Suarez said she could not release any information about the mother, including her condition or whether she used fertility drugs. Such drugs make multiple births more likely.
"They are all doing the best they can," Suarez told the AP.
The first baby was born at 10:43 a.m.; the eighth one at 10:48 a.m.
(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
"They were all screaming and kicking around very vigorously," Henry told KCAL9.
The first live-born octuplets were born in Houston in 1998, and one baby died about a week later. The surviving siblings — girls Ebuka, Gorom, Chidi, Chima and Echerem, and their brothers Ikem and Jioke — celebrated their 10th birthday in December.
Their parents, Nkem Chukwu and Iyke Louis Udobi, said they are astonished and grateful that their children have grown up to be healthy and active kids who are now in the fourth grade.
Chukwu told the AP that the parents of the newest octuplets have much to look forward to.
"Just enjoy it. It's a blessing, truly a blessing," Chukwu said. "We'll keep praying for them."
The Bellflower medical center is about 17 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
Source: Associated Press writers Denise Petski and Alicia Chang in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Picture Source: Mom Logic.com
