Two of the world's longest-surviving octuplets came home from the hospital on Tuesday night, greeted by a crush of photographers, neighbors and curious onlookers gathered on a cul-de-sac where the mother will raise her 14 children.

Nadya Suleman was sitting with her babies in the back seat of a sport utility vehicle that waded through the crowd and went straight into the garage of her new four-bedroom, three-bath home in La Habra, about 40 km southeast of Los Angeles.

Many photographers shoved and pushed as their cameras flashed, clinging to the vehicle until the garage door closed.

Suleman, an unemployed divorced mother, gave birth to the octuplets 9 weeks premature on Jan 26 in Bellflower. She already had six children, ages 2 to 7.

The octuplets 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 2.27 kg and are able to bottle feed, the hospital said. The other two girls and four boys will be released later.

"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."

Dozens of media and others waited for hours outside the home for Suleman and the babies to arrive. Various vehicles trickled in early in the evening, some of them carrying the octuplets' older siblings, Suleman's mother and caregivers.

"We wanted to see the octomom," said neighbor Johnny Euentes, 46, who 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."

The octuplets will require around-the-clock care from at least two caregivers. Angels in Waiting, a nonprofit group of nurses that specializes in caring for fragile infants and children, estimates the babies will need a combined 64 feedings a day.

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.

AP

(China Daily 03/19/2009 page11)