Nadya Suleman Opens Up About Shedding ‘Octomom’ Persona

Nadya Suleman, who now goes by Natalie, spoke on The Doctors this week to explain her decision to publicly shed the “Octomom” persona and to take responsibility for her foolish actions eight years ago.

NADYA SULEMAN ON HER OCTOMOM PERSONA

When asked why she chose now, eight years after the media frenzy around the birth of her octuplets, Suleman shared that the show had never stopped following her, and that she felt obligated to tell her truth. “My history was haunting us,” she started “I left Octomom. I went back to my life as a counselor. My kids had a healthy, happy life. The problem is this: it’s followed us, because people never knew what I did. They never knew the true story.”

She goes on to talk about the irresponsible decision to have 12 embryos implanted in her uterus via in vitro fertilization, especially when she already had 6 children at home. “I take accountability for being dumb and irresponsible. It really was,” the mother of 14 admits. “I would like to address that absolutely I don’t want to be a burden on any taxpayers and that’s the goal — to move forward and not to be a burden on anyone in society. And I own and take responsibility for my poor choices, but it certainly doesn’t take away from how extraordinary these kids ended up turning out to be.”

It was alleged that Suleman resorted to stripping and appearing in one adult film to try to make ends meet, and Suleman said the judgement she received was almost unbearable. In fact, she says the main takeaway is to never judge a person whom you don’t know. She understands the judgement she got, and even agrees she deserved it, but it has changed her outlook on life. “The ultimate lesson from my entire experience is you cannot prejudge human beings,” she said in a 2009 ET interview. “You just can’t. I don’t care who they are, what their behavior or what you’ve heard about. You have to be able to meet the person and talk with them, and even then, that’s not even enough to prejudge them.”

Suleman is trying her best to get off the remaining welfare that she does receive from the government, and in this whole process, she kicked an terrible Xanax habit that she used to need to numb herself from the experience.