Octuplets' grandmother criticizes daughter

updated 9:28 a.m. ET Feb. 9, 2009

LOS ANGELES - The mother of the woman who used a fertility doctor to give birth to octuplets, despite already having six young children, called her daughter's actions "unconscionable" in an interview posted online.

Angela Suleman is caring for the six older children while her daughter is hospitalized after giving birth Jan. 26 to the octuplets.

"She already has six beautiful children, why would she do this?" Angela Suleman said in the videotaped interview with celebrity news Web site RadarOnline.com. "I'm struggling to look after her six. We had to put in bunk beds, feed them in shifts and there's children's clothing piled all over the house."

The Web site posted photographs Sunday from inside Angela Suleman's disheveled three-bedroom home, where Nadya and her brood also live. Heaps of clothing pour from an open closet door and a carpeted bedroom, where a bedsheet serves as a curtain, is cluttered with cribs.

Nadya Suleman's publicist Mike Furtney said that his client has been away for nearly two months, so shouldn't be held responsible for the home's current condition.

Furtney said his client planned to move into a larger home once the octuplets were healthy enough to leave doctors' care.

Coming up on NBC NBC via AP Exclusive interview with octuplet mom Hear more of the interview with Nadya Suleman, including the video of her eight babies and six other children on Dateline NBC, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 10 p.m./ 9 C.

He declined to comment on any of the remarks Angela Suleman made about her daughter in the interview.

"Those are very personal issues between a mother and a daughter," he said.

Angela Suleman said Nadya's boyfriend was the biological father of all 14 children, but that she refused to marry him.

"He was in love with her and wanted to marry her," she said. "But Nadya wanted to have children on her own."

Nadya Suleman, a divorced single mother, told NBC's "Today" show that the same fertility specialist provided in-vitro fertilization for all 14 of her children.

Angela Suleman seemed to contradict that account, saying the fertility specialist who helped her daughter give birth to the octuplets was a different doctor from the one who aided in the birth of her first six children.

Slideshow   Whoa, baby Find images of famous multiples, including the Dilley sextuplets, the McCaughey septuplets and the Chukwu octuplets. more photos

Angela Suleman said she and her husband pleaded with Nadya's first fertility doctor not to treat their daughter again, so Nadya found another doctor to work with.

"I'm really angry about that," Angela Suleman said of the doctor's decision to perform the procedure.

A Medical Board of California spokeswoman said Friday that it was investigating the doctor — who has not been identified — to see if there was a "violation of the standard of care." The spokeswoman did not elaborate on the nature of the potential violations.

Angela Suleman also challenged her daughter's remarks in the NBC interview that she always wanted a large family to make up for the loneliness she felt as an only child.

"We raised her in a loving family and her father always spoiled her," Angela said.

MORE FROM HEALTH

Health Section Front

It's down to the final four on 'Biggest Loser'   Being thankful ... you’re not like mom and dad Woman meets the stranger who saved her life Holiday gatherings could spread swine flu     Women bare all for prostate cancer Gasp! Babies’ fat rolls being airbrushed away? Is your medication making you sick?   Rebecca Meyer talks ‘Loser’   St. Jude's 'little princess' battles brain cancer Resist the temptation! 8 portion control tricks Health Section Front   Add Health headlines to your news reader: