Meet The Octuplets!
The world's only living octuplets are now six weeks old.
Most appear to be doing very well. Some weigh over four pounds, but the two smallest are on feeding tubes.
Mom Nadya Suleman took Entertainment Tonight's Thea Andrews to visit the babies the babies in the hospital, Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center, outside Los Angeles, and Andrews shared some of the experience with Early Show viewers Tuesday.
Andrews says that, away from all the hoopla and controversy surrounding Suleman's decision to have the octuplets despite already having six young children, all 14 via in-vitro fertilization, Suleman gets to bond with the new arrivals in the quiet of the hospital.
First, Suleman cradled Noah, a blonde, and the first of the eight to be delivered. He weighed just one pound five ounces, but is now over four pounds, as are a few of the others.
"And he's very healthy," Suleman says, " and his monitor shows that he has really strong heart rate."
Malia, says Suleman, is "also doing really well. She's on full feeds every three hours. She's getting bottle-fed."
She says the babies know when she's there "based on smell. They understand the voice. They know the voice."
Isaiah, says Suleman, is "pretty big. He's doing really, really well. Full bottle feeds. Open your eyes, Angel! ... He's almost completely ready to go home."
The other girl is Nariah the other girl. "I think her weight is almost -- it's going up," Suleman says. "She's a really good size now."
Makai, she says, is "also doing really, really well."
Jeremiah is "also on full bottle feeds," Suleman says.
The two tiniest, both still on feeding tubes, are Josiah -- "still little, but really, really strong" and who'll be bottle feeding soon, Suleman says, and Jonah, at two-and-a-half pounds, the smallest of the eight.
Suleman didn't pick him up, but softly said, "I'll come back and hold you. I love you."
The eight still aren't out of the woods, Andrews says. Suleman has to scrub in like a surgeon for three full minutes before entering the ward and has to sanitize her hands every time she touches a new baby.
Suleman told Andrews four of the children may be ready to come home any day, but she wants to move into a house she's about to get first, and professionally baby proof it, before any of the infants leaves the hospital.
Suleman says the doctors recommend a minimum of a dozen nannies to help her out, and talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw says she's going to accept an offer of 24/7 neo-natal nursing help from the organization Angels in Waiting, an offer she earlier appeared to be spurning.