**Breaking News: Octuplet Mom Natalie ‘Nadya’ Suleman Reveals She Was Forced Into Interview After Giving Birth: ‘I Thought I Wouldn’t Survive’**.zin

Breaking News: Octuplet Mom Natalie ‘Nadya’ Suleman Opens Up About Media Pressure After Giving Birth: ‘I Thought I Wouldn’t Survive’

Natalie “Nadya” Suleman, known for giving birth to the first surviving octuplets in history in 2009, is speaking out about the intense media scrutiny she faced and the trauma that followed.

In an interview with Today.com published on Friday, March 7, the 49-year-old mother of 14 revealed that the hospital where she gave birth held a press conference without her consent, amplifying the media frenzy around her story.

“I thought for a while I wouldn’t be able to survive it,” Suleman recalled. “I didn’t allow myself to process any emotion or feelings. I was just on autopilot.”

She also disclosed that she was pressured into giving an interview and hiring a PR manager immediately after giving birth—decisions she now regrets.

“In retrospect, I would have refused,” she said. “I didn’t even know I had that right as a patient to refuse. I wish I had some legal assistance at that time.”

Suleman, who was already a mother of six and unemployed when she conceived the octuplets via IVF, believes she faced harsher criticism because she was single.

“If I were in a relationship and married, it would have acted as a buffer to being a target of that hate, of that downward social comparison,” she explained.

Now, she is reclaiming her narrative through the Lifetime docuseries Confessions of Octomom, premiering on March 10, along with I Was Octomom, a Lifetime movie based on her life.

“I attempted for 16 years to share bits and pieces of my truth, but I’ve never had an opportunity to tell the full story,” she said.

In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Suleman addressed persistent false narratives about her, particularly claims that she relied on welfare to raise her children.

“That was a lie,” she asserted. “I did not use taxpayers’ money.”

She explained that she had saved over $100,000 from her job as a psychiatric technician at a state hospital and used an inheritance of nearly $60,000 to fund her IVF treatments.

“Instead of buying a house, I bought in vitros,” she admitted. “I also took out student loans, but I paid for everything myself.”

Suleman has also spoken about her strict parenting approach, which includes no meat, no phones, and no social media for her teenage octuplets.

“For years, I was typecast as the welfare recipient, unemployed mother, all of which is wrong,” she said.

I Was Octomom premieres March 8, while Confessions of Octomom debuts on March 10, both on Lifetime.