Octuplet mom is on public assistance
The California mother of newborn octuplets is receiving public assistance, her publicist told the Los Angeles Times Monday.
Nadya Suleman receives $490 a month in food stamps, the newspaper said, and three of the six children she had before giving birth to octuplets Jan. 26 are disabled and receiving federal assistance, publicist Michael Furtney told the newspaper.
Suleman told NBC News in an interview televised Monday that she was not getting government assistance.
I'm not receiving help from the government,
Suleman, 33, of Whittier, Calif., said. I'm not trying to expect anything from anybody. (I) just wanted to do it on my own. Any resources that someone would really, really want to help us, I will accept, I would embrace.
Furtney told the Times Suleman does not regard food stamps and federal Supplemental Security Income to be welfare.
They are part of programs designed to help people with need, and she does not see that as welfare,
he said.
Furtney did not specify what disabilities Suleman's children have.
Suleman, giving her first interview since their Jan. 26 birth at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Bellflower, Calif., told Today
that she is single by choice and that donated sperm from the same man produced all 14 of her children.
I will feed them. I will do the best I possibly can,
she said. And in my own way, in my own faith, I do believe wholeheartedly that God will provide in his own way.
Suleman denied allegations that she had the octuplets to make money from her story and said it had been her overwhelming desire to have a big family because of loneliness she felt growing up as an only child.
UPI
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