I had no choice, octuplets' mom tells own mother

LOS ANGELES (AP) - February 23, 2009 "I'm not going to destroy the embryos, period. Done, done, done," Nadya Suleman told her mother in an interview videotaped last week and posted by RadarOnline.com. "You can't go back and alter the past."

Angela Suleman had told her daughter that "you should have considered your six other children" before going through the in vitro fertilization procedure that led to her to give birth to another eight children last month.

"They were frozen and you did not have to do anything," Angela Suleman said.

"They were lives," her daughter responded. "... You either use them or destroy them."

Nadya Suleman said donating the embryos to someone else was not an option. "I couldn't even fathom the idea of having my own children out in the world" without knowing them, she said.

Suleman has said six embryos were implanted for each of her six pregnancies, including four single births and one set of twins. In her last pregnancy, two of the six embryos split to create eight babies. The fertility treatments appear to violate national guidelines that specify no more than two embryos for a healthy woman under 35.

Suleman has not responded to repeated interview requests from The Associated Press. Her phone has been disconnected and she no longer has a publicist.

Single and unemployed, Suleman gave birth to octuplets on Jan. 26. All 14 of her children were conceived through in vitro fertilization, with sperm from an unidentified, platonic friend, the 33-year-old mother has said.

On ABC's "Good Morning America" on Monday, a former boyfriend of Suleman's said he wants DNA testing to determine if he's the father of the octuplets and her older children.

Denis Beaudoin told ABC that he donated sperm to Suleman during their three-year relationship in the late 1990s because she claimed to have ovarian cancer. He claims Suleman's older children bear a resemblance to him.

ABC said Suleman denied Beaudoin was the donor she used to conceive her children. When pressed, she admitted he had donated sperm but insisted it wasn't used in any of her pregnancies, the network said. Her first child was born in 2001.

Regardless of whether DNA tests show he is the father, Beaudoin, a divorced father of two, pledged to help Suleman, because "it's hard nowadays to raise two kids, let alone 14 kids."

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