Hoda Kotb Reveals She Filled out Paperwork to Adopt a Third Child

Hoda Kotb is keeping her options open when it comes to expanding her family with fiancé Joel Schiffman. The TODAY host, already mom to daughters Haley and Hope, whom she adopted in 2017 and 2019, revealed in an interview with Entertainment Tonight Tuesday that she and Schiffman have already filled out the paperwork to potentially adopt a third child.

“You know what, Joel and I have had this conversation because — you feel like you get a limited of time on earth and your heart expands, and sometimes you don’t realize your heart’s ability to expand until you’ve filled [it] and sometimes you think you’re at the top, and then you realize that there’s more room,” she told the outlet. “And we wondered, you know, would our family be better with another child? Do we have enough love, do we have enough time, you know, will we be a better family unit? And the answer to all those questions seems to be, ‘Yes, we would be.’”

It’s impossible to control what happens next, Kotb noted, explaining that whether or not they will be able to adopt a third child is “in God’s hands.” She added, “Like, all we can do is put it into the universe and fill out papers and then wait and if it happens wow, you know, that was meant to be.” With plenty of “room” and “love” in the family, Kotb said if an adoption does go through, “We’ll scoot right over, here’s some more room over here.”

It’s been a difficult year, but Kotb said her relationship with Schiffman has solidified during the coronavirus pandemic. “I realized in this moment, weirdly this may be the first real difficult thing we’ve gone through together,” she explained. And that’s what I was thinking, like, we haven’t had any big tragedies in the time we’ve known one another. And this was a difficult time. And I realized in this moment that he’s rock solid in a crisis, he’s rock solid.”

While a timeline for the pandemic remains unclear, Kotb said she hopes to tie the knot next year. “I mean, everything’s gonna depend on if people can fly and that’s the whole thing, like, you really can’t say, you know, we’re gonna do it…if things are still influxed, we’ll probably just do something closer to home with a smaller group I think,” she said. “If in the next six or eight months it still doesn’t look like people are flying or going places, then we’ll probably end up doing something in the summertime close by I think.”