Hoda Kotb revealed how she’s talked to her daughters, Hope and Haley, about being adopted.
While appearing on the Tuesday, September 23, episode of Today With Jenna & Friends, Kotb, 61, spoke to host Jenna Bush Hager and guest co-host Sheinelle Jones about Haley, 8, and Hope, 6, whom she adopted with ex-fiancé Joel Schiffman.
During the conversation, Kotb admitted she’s had to have some more serious conversations with her daughters as they’ve gotten older. “I think for my kids, they were asking me … I was telling them about adoption, and I thought, ‘How do you tell that story to your kids?’” Kotb said. “And I said at first, ‘You weren’t born in my tummy, you were born in my heart,’ and they were like, ‘Oh, okay.’”
She then recalled having to explain how babies are born to her daughters, and she ended up telling them that they came from someone else’s stomach.
“She’s like your birth mother angel, and she’s there,” Kotb recalled of her conversation with her kids. “God gave her the job to carry you so that she could give you to me. That was her job. And then they said, ‘Our birth mother angel.’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ ‘Is she alive?’ ‘Yeah, somewhere out there, we don’t know who that is yet.”
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Kotb continued to talk about motherhood while appearing on Bush Hager’s “Open Book with Jenna” podcast on September 23, and she reflected on what it’s like to be an older mother.
“I’ve often thought about being an older mom,” Kotb said. “And it was funny. I was just reading something and, you know, a lot of moms start at 20, 25, 30, even 35, when you don’t know anything about who you are. You’re imparting your parents’ values on your kids. You’re just doing what we all do.”
After noting that she “kind of gets an ouch” when she’s referred to as an older mom, Kotb pointed out that she was more “wisdom” due to her age. She said that her daughters are “getting more from me” than they would if she were younger, adding that her life experiences has helped her become a better parent.
“And although I still lose it often, I think I lose it less than I would’ve in my 30s,” she continued. “But I do feel like they’re getting more from me that you wouldn’t normally get from a parent who was in their 30s who hasn’t lived a life to know.”