The scenario that she was taking fertility drugs on her own, without a doctor’s supervision, is the only one that makes sense to me. If she did indeed work at a fertility clinic, she would have access to fertility drugs.
There isn’t a doctor stepping forward, taking responsibility for this pregnancy. The HMO that delivered the octuplets, Kaiser, does not provide IVF services. Kaiser claims that she came to them at 12 weeks gestation.
It would have been so unethical for a doctor to implant 8 embryo. Especially in a woman who is not infertile! (6 other children!!) It also would have been unethical for a doctor to do an IUI (artificial insemination) without an ultrasound to monitor how many eggs have been produced. If there are too many eggs, the doctor should not have gone through with the insemination.
It would have had to been a real quack of a doctor to be involved in a situation like this, with a woman who was not infertile. For that reason your scenario that she was taking the drugs unmonitored by a doctor makes more sense to me.
Jeannine
It’s also possible that she was taking the drugs with monitoring, but then refused to comply with doctors’ instructions to avoid any kind of insemination due to the large number of maturing eggs. There’s also a tiny possibility that this is some freak embryo-splitting situation. There was a case reported last year of identical triplets born via IVF. If I recall the details correctly, the clinic had transferred two embryos, one didn’t stick, and the other was a mischievous little thing that split in 3! Theoretically, it’s possible that two embryos transferred (the max that would be reasonable for a woman in her early 30s with recently proven fertility) could have gone crazy splitting — one into the six boys and the other into the two girls.