Nadya 'Octomom' Suleman on food stamps, says she gets death threats

Nadya Suleman (Star)

Nadya "Octomom" Suleman is on food stamps.

"I made that call reluctantly," she said on the "Today" show Thursday. "I needed to remove my pride, it was fear. I was terrified and I received thousands and thousands of death threats."

She added that "I still am [working] as hard as I can to support them."

California offers $2,000 a month food assistance to large families earning less than $119,000 a year. Suleman has 14 children after undergoing repeated in vitro fertilizations. She is famous for having octuplets after she already had six children.

Lauer asked if she had ever given any thought to how she would raise such a large family before she had her children.

"In my mind I was doing well with the six, and it's three books in itself to rationalize why I wanted one more after six," she said. "But who cares how I feel. It's about my children. They deserve the best."

PHOTOS: Octomom poses topless for magazine.

Suleman makes money largely from personal appearances, photo shoots (like the topless one she did for the UK magazine Closer), and the new Dial-A-Star service where people pay big money ($14 a minute!) to talk to her.

"I'm far from a star, but I'm someone who people want to talk to," she said.

And it sounds like she has a lot to talk about.

"It would take 14 books to tell you about my life," she told "Today." "People don't know what's going on in my life but 95 percent of what has been out from the beginning is erroneous."