Octo-Mom Admits To Oprah: Having More Children Was "A Childish Desire"

April 20 2010, Published 2:51 p.m. ET

Octo-Mom Nadya Suleman went head-to-head with chat show queen Oprah Winfrey on Tuesday and admitted that having octuplets on top of the six children she already had was "childish."

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Suleman explained to Winfrey that she was, "caught-up in a childish desire to have more children" to compensate for being an only child. She was using the children to "fill a void."

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She also claimed that she would never do porn or reveal the identity of the father of her fourteen kids. “I feel like they are trying to steal a piece of the situation, exploiting me, disrespecting me as a mother, my children," Suleman said about the offer she received to join the adult entertainment industry. “They have offered this three times but it is disrespectful to me as a mother. I would never, never do something like that.”

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A crew from Oprah’s show visited Nadya's La Habra, Calif., home -- the one that she could still lose -- in order to take a real look at how she manages to run her large brood.

While the crew toured the house they discovered that Nadya has three nannies to help her during the day (not at night), spends around $1,000 a week on groceries and she has one car to ferry all 14 kids around.

At one point she could not find one of her kids, Caleb, and seemed to have problems keeping track of them all. One of her other sons, Jonah, got an ear infection during the taping and a friend had to take him to hospital while Nadya stayed at home. The octuplets are put to bed at 5:30 pm after their evening meal before the older kids are fed. Often the kids cry all night and Nadya spends the evening in the nursery and barely gets any sleep before they all wake up again by 6:30 am.

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Octo-Mom Won’t Lose Her Home - Yet

When Oprah asked Nadya if she had considered giving her kids up for adoption so that they could be better cared for, Suleman countered that she would do everything in her power "to avoid that at all costs."

Oprah also pressed Nadya about revealing the identity of the father. Nadya replied that she "did not feel that was her place and that it would be completely disrespectful to exploit him."

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She continued to be reflective about her life decisions throughout the show. “I have been ashamed of myself for going through media outlets to take care of my children. I had never been interested in the media industry before having children," she added. "I never ever could have conceptualized this... due to the selfish choice I made.

"I thank you Oprah for finally allowing me to tell the truth."