What happened to Octomom? This is what she’s up to 10 years later

Now known as Natalie, the mum-of-14 posts regularly on Instagram and it seems that she and her kids are doing just great after a few difficult years.

Her backstory

Nadya Suleman was born in 1975, an only child, in California, USA. She got married in 1996 at the age of just 21 and started having IVF just one year later in 1997. She separated from her husband, Marco Gutierrez in 2000 and their divorce was finalised in 2008. Gutierrez has said that their separation was down to their inability to have children naturally.

Whilst Suleman wanted to use IVF, Gutierrez was not keen. There doesn't seem to be any bad blood between the ex-couple, however, as Gutierrez told Inside Edition in 2009 that whilst he is not the father of any of Suleman's children, he wishes her the best and describes her as 'a great person with a great heart'.

Suleman gave birth to her first child, a son, in 2001, followed by a daughter in 2002. She continued to have IVF treatments which resulted in three more sons and another daughter, including one set of non-identical twins.

How she became the Octomom

In 2008, Suleman underwent IVF again, having the six frozen embryos leftover from her previous treatments, plus six fresh ones implanted. This was far more than the two or three embryos that a woman of her age would usually have transferred.

Suleman's continuation of the octuplets pregnancy caused great controversy in the media and she even received death threats and actual violence. Many people felt she was irresponsibleto have so many children, especially as she was unemployed and had been claiming disability benefit since 2002.

The octuplets were born on 26 January 2009 and were all home by April 14th that year. They are the first octuplets known to have all survived infancy. There were six boys named Noah, Isaiah, Makai, Josiah, Jeremiah and Jonah and two girls named Maliyah and Nariyah.

What happened next

Suleman appeared on many TV shows during her pregnancy and following the birth of the octuplets.

In March 2012 she posed semi-nudefor Closer Magazine and in the same year she featured in a low-budget horror film entitled666 The Devil's Child in which she played a virgin film student called Vanessa. She also filmed a porn videoOctomom Home Alone and worked as a stripper in clubs. Suleman revealed to Radar:

I got so much bad press about being on benefits that I decided to exploit myself by posing for photoshoots, and I even did some porn to make money. But I hated it and was stressed out all the time; I relied on painkillers and drink to cope.

In April 2012 she was reported to be up to a million dollars in debt and she filed for personal bankruptcy.

How she turned her life around

Suleman has said she decided to 'kill off' the Octomom character in 2013 after discovering her 10-year-old daughter Amerah dressing up in a pair of 'stripper heels'. She said 'I'd rather be homeless with 14 kids living in my van than allow any of my girls, my daughters to go down the path I had gone down.'

Since then, she has been working as a counsellor and therapist and describes the old Octomom persona as 'despicable'. She is a committed churchgoer and an ethical raw vegan, with eight of her 14 kids also vegan.