Hoda Kotb is opening up about her adoption journey.
Appearing on a recent episode of the Just B with Bethenny Frankel podcast, theToday co-host, 58, talked about worrying she’d run out of time for motherhood.
“I think when you realize that that wasn’t meant for you, or you think that at least initially, it’s a terrifying part of life because you have to face it,” she said. “I remember never saying out loud that I wanted kids, never, because it was too late.”
“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.”
Kotb also recalled walking in the Hamptons with a friend who turned to her and said, “Well, we never wanted kids.”
“And I stopped and I looked at her and said, ‘I actually did,” the journalist recalled. “And she said, ‘You never said that,’ and I said, ‘Because it can’t be,’ and I couldn’t believe I said it out loud.”
Afterward, “Everywhere I looked, I saw a sign that it was possible,” she recalled, adding, “Maybe there’s a kid that needs me.”
“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 of the process.
Then, Kotb emotionally recalled getting the call about daughter Haley Joy, now 6, who has since been joined by sister Hope Catherine, 3.
“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.'”
“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.'”
“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.”