Wearing nine hospital wrist bands - one for her and each of her newborns - the woman who gave birth to octuplets in the US last month has broken her silence, saying she longed for a “huge family” to make up for her lonely childhood.

Nadya Suleman, 33, a single mother who already had six children before becoming pregnant with octuplets, admitted in an interview with NBC that each of her 14 children were born through IVF and sperm donations.

She said that she had continued to seek fertility treatment to extend her family and make up for being an only child.

"That was always a dream of mine, to have a large family, a huge family. I just longed for certain connections and attachments with another person that I really lacked, I believe, growing up," Ms Suleman said.

She said that her childhood left her feeling a lack of "self and identity".

"I didn't feel as though, when I was a child, I had much control of my environment. I felt powerless. And that gave me a sense of predictability," she said.

"Reflecting back on my childhood, I know it wasn't functional. It was pretty - pretty dysfunctional, and whose isn't?"

According to public documents released to the Associated Press yesterday, Ms Suleman suffered depression after she was injured in a riot in 1999 at the state mental hospital where she worked.

The documents also revealed that she collected more than $165,000 in disability payments between 2002-2008 for an injury which she claimed had left her in constant pain and helped to ruin her marriage.

A doctors report in the documents indicates that Ms Suleman had a happy childhood and says that she had three miscarriages and two ectopic pregnancies.

Ms Suleman told NBC that she had tried for seven years to get pregnant before turning to IVF. She said that after the first treatment was successful she “just kept going on”.

Ms Suleman is back at home where she lives with her parents, who are currently looking after her six older children, including one set of twins, all under eight-years-old. The octuplets, six boys and two girls, who were born nine weeks prematurely, remain in hospital and will be released individually as they reach their near-normal newborn weight.

Ms Suleman’s story has divided public opinion: at first the world was impressed by her ability to give birth to eight live babies, then shocked by the revelation she already had six children who were all born via fertility treatment.

She had eight of her own frozen embryos implanted but under guidelines issued by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), a woman of Ms Suleman's age should have no more than two embryos implanted.

The Medical Board of California confirmed yesterday that it had begun an investigation into the births "to see if we can substantiate a violation of the standard of care".

Ms Suleman’s mother Angela Suleman said that she hoped public opinion would be changed now her daughter had gone public.

“She’s a very likable person,” Angela Suleman said on Wednesday. “She’s basically normal except for this obsession she’s always had with children.”

NBC said it had not paid that Ms Suleman for the interview, which will air on Monday, despite the story being highly sought after.

It rivalled only that of Chelsy ‘Sully’ Sullenberger, who landed a disabled jet in the Hudson river last month.

Mr Sullenberger granted his interviews to ABC and CBS, who will broadcast his interview at the same time as NBC airs their one-on-one with Ms Suleman.

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