California Probing Octuplets Case

Hospital officials say the octuplets born outside Los Angeles ten days ago continue to do well.

But, reports Early Show national correspondent Hattie Kauffman, the California Medical Board is investigating "to see if we can substantiate a violation of the standard of care" in their implantation in their mother's womb.

Nadya Suleman, 33, had eight embryos implanted, her mother has told CBS News. Suleman already had six children, aged two-to-seven, at the time.

Questions remain about how and where Suleman received the fertility treatments that led to the birth of the octuplets, Kauffman points out.

Fertility specialist Dr. Mark Surrey remarked to Kauffman, "It's not good medicine. It's really something that should be critiqued and condemned."

Suleman once worked as a psychiatric technician for a state hospital in Norwalk, Calif., Kauffman says. But she's been unemployed since 2001. Documents show she filed two workman's compensation claims, including one for a car accident. Her mother told CBS News that's how she paid for the fertility treatments. The question, though is -- how will she pay for raising the kids?

Parents magazine Editor in Chief Dana Points says it costs an average of $204,000 to raise one child in the U.S. from birth to age 18, according to the most recent statistics.

Two-hundred-thousand times eight is $1.6 million, Kauffman notes, and that doesn't even include the cost of raising Suleman's other six kids.

In the past, Kauffman says, families with multiple births have received generous donations from the public, such as a new home, a mini van and even a book deal.

Will Suleman get such help?

A publicist she hired, Michael Furtney, told Kauffman, "We've had a fair number of proposals, but I don't think I've seen anything involving a home as yet."

Court records show Suleman was once married, and officially divorced just a year ago, Kauffman says. The documents list the couple as having no children. And although she's now living in Whittier, Calif., with her parents, her family once abandoned a nearby home two years ago and filed for bankruptcy.

Despite all the challenges, Furtney says Suleman is joyful to be a new mom eight-times-over. "She appreciates that it will be a challenge," he says, "but she's totally committed to being the mom."