Hoda Kotb had nearly given up on her dream of becoming a mother before being blessed with her two daughters. The Today Show host was 52 years old when she adopted her first daughter, Haley, with her ex-fiance Joel Schiffman. They adopted their second daughter, Hope, two years later. Kotb and Schiffman split after eight years together. But, she’ll forever be grateful to him for giving her the family of her dreams. However, the road there was a hard one. While speaking on the Just B with Bethenny Frankel podcast about her journey, she admitted that she was fearful of motherhood by the time Haley came along because she felt she’d passed her mark.
“I remember never saying out loud that I wanted kids, never, because it was too late,” she shared. “For girls that it’s too late for, you don’t say it because if you say it, you’re expressing something that you’re never going to get.” When she realized that she may not be able to biologically carry her own children, she researched other options. She went to an adoption agency and kept the faith along the way. But, she was never given a definitive timeline of when she’d become a mother, which added more stress.
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“I filled out all the paperwork and did all the stuff that you do, and they’re like, ‘Okay, maybe a year, maybe six months, maybe five years, bye,’” she said. Alas, it was all worth it in the end.
Getting emotional about learning she’d become a mother, Kotb explained when she got the notice. “I was sitting there, and I was doing some phone call with some nutritionist about something and babbling on and on. My phone beeped, and I looked at it, and it said Ashley, and Ashley was the lady from my adoption agency, and she said, ‘If I ever text you, you need to call me back immediately,” she said. “I saw her name, I hung up the phone, I took a yellow pad out, and I wrote, ’11:55. This is the moment everything changes,’ I knew it,” she continued. “And I took a deep breath and dialed the number, and I said, ‘Ashley?’ and she said two words to me. She said, ‘She’s here.’”
She continued, “I don’t know what birth feels like, and I bet it was amazing, but this was really close,” she said through tears. “I remember that feeling like it was yesterday.”
