Texas Octuplets Turn 10
By: RNS/Randi Kaye, CNN
Updated: February 19, 2009
Normally. moms who give birth to a large brood win sympathy and even adulation in America.
That is not the case for Nadya Suleman, 33, who gave birth to octuplets last month.
A "USA Today" poll has found seven out of ten adults feel no sympathy for Suleman. The survey found 32-percent of those polled don't think California should help the woman and 21-percent feel the eight babies should be removed from her care.
The single unemployed mom lives with her mother and six other children in a small home in Whittier, California.
If Suleman, the mother of newborn octuplets, wants some advice, she should ask the Chukwu Family of Texas. The family includes the seven surviving members of first octuplets born in the U.S. They recently turned ten.
The Chukwus, who live in league City, pray every day that the octuplets in California grow up healthy and strong. The smallest of the Chukwu octuplets weighed 11 ounces, and died a week after she was born.
Ike and Nkem Chukwu did not use IVF to conceive the babies; they used fertility drugs. Then, four years later, they conceived another baby naturally.
Ike has eight well-behaved children, but doesn't think he and his wife would be able to handle 14.
"When they start crying at night, she won't know whom to attend to first," Nkem said of Suleman. "(But) it's not for me to judge. I know they need help, they need support."
Ike works two jobs so Nkem can stay home with the kids. They go through two gallons of milk and three boxes of cereal a day.
They also received an abunance of donations when the kids were born, from diapers to their six-bedroom home.
The Chukwu family hopes to meet the Suleman octuplets this summer.
