LA HABRA, Calif. — Octuplet mom Nadya Suleman’s newfound celebrity reached a fever pitch as she brought home the first two of her eight babies.
Scores of photographers, reporters and gawkers who had staked out her new house for hours clung to her vehicle as she arrived home late Tuesday in a homecoming reminiscent of the scenes that have surrounded Hollywood’s infamous celebutantes in recent years.
Suleman was sitting with her babies in the back seat of the SUV as it churned through the crowd and went straight into the garage of her new four-bedroom, three-bath home in La Habra, about 25 miles southeast of Los Angeles where she will raise her 14 children.
The media mob shoved and pushed as their cameras flashed, with some grabbing and riding the vehicle until the garage door closed despite being dented and nearly pulled off its tracks.
Video posted on Radaronline.com, where Suleman has been publishing a video diary, showed the SUV pulling into the garage from the inside, and screams can be heard for the photographers to get out. Laughter is audible from inside the vehicle after the garage door closed.
Two caretakers in scrubs help Suleman take the babies into the house after she shows them off to the camera, and Suleman’s older children are shown kneeling and fawning over their baby brothers.
“My head is just going to just burst,” Suleman says.
Suleman’s mother then chides her to pay attention to one of her older sons and complains of the lack of blankets in the house.
Suleman, an unemployed divorced mother, gave birth to the octuplets nine weeks premature on Jan. 26 in Bellflower. She already had six children, ages 2 to 7.
The octuplets — who at birth weighed from 1 pound, 8 ounces to 3 pounds, 4 ounces — spent their first seven weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center. The first two babies to be discharged — Noah and Isaiah — are each about 5 pounds and are able to bottle feed, the hospital said.
The other two girls and four boys continue gaining weight and will be released in the coming days, the hospital said.
“This is a happy moment for everyone — the family, physicians, nurses and entire NICU staff,” said Dr. Mandhir Gupta, a neonatologist at the medical center. “It is always rewarding whenever a premature infant goes home as a healthy baby.”
Several neighbors joined other onlookers to take in the scene.
“We wanted to see the octomom,” said neighbor Johnny Euentes, 46, who lives around the corner and waited with his wife and son on the cul-de-sac. “I’ve got nothing else to do tonight; I’m just missing ‘American Idol.’”
As Suleman’s vehicle pulled in, Euentes switched from gawking to crowd control as he tried to pull photographers off the SUV and keep them out of the garage.
The babies’ historic births were initially met with curiosity and celebration, but a backlash against Suleman grew as the public learned that the 33-year-old mother had few means to support her brood.
In recent weeks, Suleman has been seen squabbling with her mother on Internet videos, and led tours of her new home for paparazzi.
Last week, as Suleman made last-minute fixes to make the home safer for the delicate infants, she had a televised baby shower on the “Dr. Phil” show.
Suleman said she is paying for the house — listed for $564,900 — with money from “opportunities” she has selected, but did not elaborate.
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