Octo-Mom Says Pregnancy, Anxiety Contributed to Frantic 911 Calls

March 5, 2009 — -- Octuplet mom

Police in Whittier, Calif., say they responded eight times to emergency calls from the Suleman family. Those 911 tapes are now raising questions about what the home environment is like as the mother of 14 says in an interview with Radar Online that she expects to start bringing some of her octuplets home from the hospital this week.

The hospital, however, has indicated that it may not allow the children to go home with Suleman if it believes she is incapable of caring for that many infants.

"I'm one of those parents, I have to see them at all times and know exactly what they're doing at all times, and if I don't, I get a little anxious, I get really nervous," Suleman told Radar Online this week.

But on the 911 tapes, the voice on the other end of the phone sounds more than a little anxious.

"Please God help me," she said in an October call when, pregnant with the octuplets. She couldn't find her 5-year-old son. "Oh God, I am going to kill myself. Oh God. I'm going to kill myself. I am going to kill myself."

The 911 operator told Suleman to control herself in front of her other child, saying, "he doesn't need to hear that."

"Help me!" Suleman said on the call. "My son is missing! I'm going crazy!"

Her son was safe, having followed his grandmother as she walked around the block.

Suleman said most of the 911 calls were made because of complications with her pregnancy. But the children also called 911 on their own.

In one call, a little boy can be heard telling the 911 operator that he was in charge.

And then there was the neighbor who called the California Department of Child and Family Services last summer, saying the children were not clean or well-fed.

Suleman pointed out that investigators found no grounds for the complaint.

"There was an elderly neighbor, and she thought the kids were making too much noise," Suleman said in one of her RadarOnline interviews. "The police showed up and found no merit to the complaint."

Suleman, who spent the first weeks after her octuplets' birth hiding from the media, has become a fixture on Radar Online, giving interviews and keeping a daily diary. One recent entry wanted to know "Since when is it a crime to call 911?"

Record Octuplet Birth Sparks Controversy

When Nadya Suleman gave birth to the history-making octuplets in January, a string of controversies were soon to follow.

Just days after news of the multiple birth reached coast to coast, it came to light that the 33-year-old mother already had six children who were born, like the octuplets, through in vitro fertilization.

Nadya's mother, Angela Suleman, has been vocal about her disapproval.

"It can't go on any longer," she told The Associated Press in January. "She's got six children and no husband. I was brought up the traditional way. I firmly believe in marriage. But she didn't want to get married."

In February, she said her daughter's decision to impregnate herself again after giving birth to six children was " really unconscionable" and the single mother has "no means to support" 14 children.

Thousands of California taxpayers voiced their own disapproval on message boards when they learned they could be the ones footing the bill for the octuplet's expensive hospital stay, estimated in February to be in the neighborhood of $1 million.

With the help of a public relations firm, the Suleman family set up a Web site that allows supporters to donate to the family. According to Mike Furtney, a spokesman for the family, the Web site inspired some heated criticism but also a generous outpouring of support. One farmer in the Midwest even offered to house the family under his roof.

The story took another turn when Denis Beaudoin came forward to say he had donated sperm three times while he and Suleman were dating because she asked him to and he was possibly the octuplet's father.

But after Beaudoin came forward, Suleman said he was "absolutely" not the father.