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January 16, 2011

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Debt-plagued Octomom says she was baby addict

"OCTOMOM" Nadya Suleman was addicted to having children when she gave birth to octuplets in 2009 and called herself "stupid" for allowing herself to get into huge debt, she told "The Oprah Winfrey Show" on Friday.

Suleman, who has been plagued with money problems and threatened with eviction from her Southern California home, appeared on Winfrey's show for a financial intervention from money guru Suze Orman.

"I think I could've been self-medicating through children," Suleman said. "Kids are safer. Kids won't leave you. Kids will give me the unconditional acceptance and love that I didn't feel I got from my mother."

Suleman said she felt a "hole" after six kids and wanted more, but that after 14 kids the hole was still there.

"If I knew then what I know now, I would not have said, 'Doctor, one more,'" Suleman said.

When Suleman said she paid for in vitro fertilization through savings, to which Orman replied: "Lie, lie, lie!" Orman said she had seen Suleman's finances and insisted she had borrowed the money.

She heatedly urged Suleman to give up private school and excessive gifts for her children, and a personal trainer and manicures for herself.

"It makes me want to throw up thinking about it," Suleman said in response. "I am so stupid. I am so stupid."

Orman urged Suleman to get an agent and look into doing more television and other media with her children as she did in the months after they were born, something Suleman said she would no longer do for fears that she would be perceived as crazy or was exploiting her children.

Suleman has a US$4,000 mortgage payment due on February 1, and is months overdue on a US$450,000 balloon payment.

Steven Hirsch, co-founder of adult film company Vivid Entertainment, has offered to pay her February mortgage while he considers buying the La Habra home. Suleman has not commented on the offer.


 

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