WHITTIER (California), Jan 30: The Southern California woman who gave birth to octuplets recently had six other children and never expected to have eight more when she took fertility treatment, her mother said.

Angela Suleman said her daughter expected a big challenge raising 14 children. The good news, she said, was that all the babies appeared healthy.

“I looked at those babies. They are so tiny and so beautiful,” Ms Suleman told The Los Angeles Times on Thursday.

Ms Suleman’s daughter gave birth to the octuplets on Monday at a hospital in Bellflower but has requested that doctors keep her name confidential. Media knew little about the woman until a family acquaintance told CBS’s “The Early Show” on Thursday that the mother was “fairly young” and lived with her parents and her six children.

Within hours, media had camped out at the family’s home in Whittier, where the babies’ grandfather pulled up in a minivan in the evening and briefly spoke to The Associated Press. Beside him were two children — a seven-year-old and six-year-old — who said they were excited to have eight new siblings.

The grandfather warned that media might have a tougher time finding the family after the babies were released from the hospital. “We have a huge house, not here,” said the man, who would only identify himself as Ed. “You are never going to know where it is.”

Ms Suleman said her daughter had embryos implanted last year, and after finding out she was pregnant with multiple babies was given the option by doctors of selectively reducing the number of embryos. The woman declined.

“What do you suggest she should have done? She refused to have them killed,” Ms Suleman told the Times. “That is a very painful thing.”

Dr Harold Henry said the woman was already pregnant when she came to Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Centre, and she was counselled about the risks of her pregnancy and on the option of aborting some of the foetuses. Doctors had been expecting only seven babies, but an eighth was born in the caesarean delivery.

The six boys and two girls, the second octuplets born alive in the United States, have garnered worldwide attention.—AP