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Octuplets Celebrate 3rd Birthday

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — Nadya Suleman's octuplets are celebrating their 3rd birthday Thursday.

The landmark set of octuplets – the only complete set in the world – were born on January 26, 2009 at Kaiser Permanente in Bellflower. The set includes six male and two female children, whose names are: Noah, Maliyah, Isaiah, Nariyah, Jonah, Josiah, Jeremiah and Makai. They all have the same middle name: Angel.

Suleman, who already had six children before undergoing fertility treatments and being implanted with 12 embryos, was soon dubbed "Octomom" by the public.

Since the octuplets' birth, Suleman has used her newfound celebrity to help pay the estimated $15,000 a month it takes to care for 14 children – she has starred in a reality show, posed in a bikini for a photo shoot and boxed against "Long Island Lolita" Amy Fischer. Suleman also staged a widely publicized yard sale to try to raise money to save her home.

Despite her attempt to capitalize on her fame, she has fallen behind on making mortgage payment on her La Habra home and plans to sell it in a short-sale.

Despite the familys' troubles, the octuplets' survival is remarkable – they are only the second full set of octuplets to be born alive in the United States and have surpassed the previous worldwide survival-rate for a complete set of octuplets set by the Chukwu octuplets of 1998, according to Wikipedia.

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