After adopting her daughter in 2017, Today Show personality, Hoda Kotb is gearing up for a second child in an effort to expand her family with longtime partner, Joel Schiffman.
In an interview with Entertainment Tonight earlier this month, Kotb reveals that she is open to giving daughter Haley Joy a sibling one of these days.
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“We don’t know when, but it is something that is important to me and to Joel,” Kotb admitted while promoting her new children’s book, You Are My Happy. “We like the idea of Haley [having] a sibling because she has had such interesting circumstances to grow up. So, it would be nice to be able to share it with somebody.”
While in conversation with ET, Kotb also added how she always had an ache in her for to fulfill the role of motherhood that she couldn’t ignore.
“I always had this thing inside me like a voice that I couldn’t quiet,” she recalled. “It was a voice that [told me I] wanted to be a mom, but I thought it was too late. You can push a voice like that away for a long time but sooner or later it comes back up, and you have to address it.”
Kotb adds that the thing every parent knows is that when their child arrives, it’s at the right time.
“So your time may be when you are in your 30s or in your 40s or your 50s, but your child is right on time,” she shared.
In February 2017, the 54-year-old news anchor adopted her now 2-year-old daughter, Haley Joy with boyfriend, Schiffman. When she first announced the adoption in an interview with PEOPLE, she admitted she never believed motherhood was on the docket for her.
“It’s one of those things where you think you’ve done it all, you think you’ve felt it all. But I just didn’t know that this kind of love existed,” Kotb said, adding how there was a “hole” in her life before Haley Joy’s arrival. “One of the things I’ve always wanted was to be a mom.”
Fighting past the fears and stigmas, Kotb, 52 at the time, revealed how she confronted the dilemma by simply asking, “Why can’t I? Why not me?” and took action in the adoption process.
Last week, Kotb surprised fans when she revealed longtime boyfriend, Schiffman was listed as the father of her Haley Joy during an appearance on The Wendy Williams Show, explaining she was initially hesitant to bring up adoption plans to him as he is already a father to daughter Kyle Schiffman from a previous relationship. After sharing her thoughts with Schiffman, she was relived to learn he was on the exact same page.
“I said, ‘I want to explore adoption with you,’” she recalled. “He said, ‘I don’t need a minute.’ I cried on his chest and my mascara went down because in that minute he knew that there was nothing that could make me happier.”
Kotb previously told PEOPLE that being a mom now takes precedence over anything else in her life.
“Work has ridden sidecar right next to me my whole life, and now it’s time for a baby seat to be here,” she said. “I enjoy work and I love it and I put my heart and soul into it when I’m there, but my true heart is with [Haley], all the time now. I love being able to say it out loud, that my time with her is the most important thing — more important than work and more important than anything.”
Photo credit: Instagram / @hodakotb
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