Media Mob Scene At Octuplets' Homecoming
It was a three-ring circus as the first two of the California octuplets came home Thursday night.
The newfound celebrity of their mother, Nadya Suleman, reached a fever pitch. Scores of photographers, reporters and gawkers who had staked out her new house for hours clung to her vehicle as she arrived home late Tuesday in a homecoming reminiscent of the scenes that have surrounded Hollywood's infamous celebutantes in recent years.
Lara Spencer, of "The Insider" and Thea Andrews, of "Entertainment Tonight," were the only two reporters in the house when the infants got there, and told about the experience on The Early Show Wednesday.
Spencer described the scene at the house as "total chaos."
Suleman was sitting with her babies in the back seat of the SUV as it churned through the crowd and went straight into the garage of her new four-bedroom, three-bath home in La Habra, about 25 miles southeast of Los Angeles, where she will raise her 14 children.
The media mob shoved and pushed as their cameras flashed, with some grabbing and riding the vehicle until the garage door closed despite being dented and nearly pulled off its tracks. Helicopters overhead captured it all on video.
ET/Insider cameras in the vehicle recorded Suleman saying into a cell phone, ""They're (media members) all over and they're making them (the babies) cry."
"It did get a little bit scary," Spencer recalled, "when the paparazzi tried to get into the house. They went into the garage." Still, she says, Suleman seemed "totally calm in the midst of this."
One neighbor who did not identify herself described the crowd's behavior as "ridiculous."
"It was so awful," the woman told KCAL-TV. "I can't believe people would do that to her. It's really sad. All the paparazzi hanging on to a car like that? It's really crazy."
Suleman, an unemployed divorced mother, gave birth to the octuplets nine weeks premature on Jan. 26 in another L.A. suburb, Bellflower. She already had six children, ages two-to-seven.
The octuplets - who at birth weighed from 1 pound, 8 ounces to 3 pounds, 4 ounces - spent their first seven weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center. The first two babies to be discharged - Noah and Isaiah - are each about 5 pounds and are able to bottle feed, the hospital said.
Spencer and Andrews got to give them bottles in the house, they report.
They watched as the older siblings met the new arrivals.
The other two girls and four boys continue gaining weight and will be released another day, the hospital said.
They'll probably come home in groups of two, Spencer notes.
"This is a happy moment for everyone - the family, physicians, nurses and entire NICU staff," said Dr. Mandhir Gupta, a neonatologist at the medical center. "It is always rewarding whenever a premature infant goes home as a healthy baby."
Several neighbors joined other onlookers to take in the scene.
"We wanted to see the 'octomom," ' said neighbor Johnny Euentes, 46, who lives around the corner and waited with his wife and son on the cul-de-sac. "I've got nothing else to do tonight; I'm just missing American Idol."
As Suleman's vehicle pulled in, Euentes switched from gawking to crowd control as he tried to pull photographers off the SUV and keep them out of the garage.
Video posted on Radaronline.com, where Suleman has been posting a video diary, showed the SUV pulling into the garage from the inside, and screams could be heard for the photographers to get out. Laughter is audible from inside the vehicle after the garage door closed.
Two caretakers in scrubs help Suleman take the babies into the house after she shows them off to the camera, and Suleman's older children are shown kneeling and fawning over their baby brothers.
"My head is just going to just burst," Suleman says.
Suleman's mother then chides her to pay attention to one of her older sons and complains of the lack of blankets in the house.
The babies' historic births were initially met with curiosity and celebration, but a backlash against Suleman grew as the public learned that the 33-year-old mother had few means to support her brood.
In recent weeks, Suleman has been seen squabbling with her mother on Internet videos, and led tours of her new home for paparazzi.
Last week, as Suleman made last-minute fixes to make the home safer for the delicate infants, she had a televised baby shower on the "Dr. Phil" show.
Suleman said she is paying for the house - listed for $564,900 - with money from "opportunities" she has selected, but did not elaborate on what they were.
But, Early Show national correspondent Hattie Kauffman has pointed out, that story keeps changing. She at one point said the house was leased, not bought. There were also reports it is in her biological father's name.