Hoda Kotb: I would take my worst day after my baby came over my favorite day before
January 24, 2018
Last year, Today’s Hoda Kotb announced that she’d adopted a baby. It was one of the most heartfelt and open birth announcements we’ve ever heard from a celebrity and you could tell that Hoda absolutely adores her daughter, little Haley Joy. Hoda’s affection and love for Haley was infectious and raw. All of this happened of course before we learned that Matt Lauer is a serial predator and before Hoda took over as co-anchor on the Today Show with Savannah Guthrie, who has two children, including a baby boy, Charlie, just a few weeks older than Haley. Hoda and Savannah have only increased ratings for The Today Show and there’s a lot of interest in their personal lives. Hoda recently went on Ellen where she talked about her boyfriend and her daughter, who is now 11 months old. She was of course as open and real as we’ve come to expect from her and I just love seeing her. Here’s some of what she said and the video is below.
On talking to her boyfriend about her decision to adopt
I had thought about having kids for a long, long time. But one day I was sitting with my boyfriend and I said to him, ‘I’m going to have to talk to you about something because I can’t push it down anymore, push it away.’ I said, ‘Don’t answer now. Take a day, take a week, take some time. But I want to talk to you about this.’ And he said, ‘OK, what is it?’ And I said, ‘I would like to explore adoption with you.’Keep in mind he has a daughter who is in law school. He’s about to turn 60. And he looked at me and said, ‘I don’t need a day.’ And I knew I’d chosen the right man.
The moment she heard Haley arrived
I still remember the day I was sitting in my office waiting for the moment you get a phone call. I saw a text and she texted ‘call me.’ I stopped for a minute. I looked at the clock and I wrote down 11:54 a.m. I knew that was the minute it was changing. I just felt it. And I dialed the number, and she answered the phone and she said, ‘She’s here.’ [gets choked up]On how her life has changed
I would take my worst day, the day when everything is falling apart, with Haley over my favorite day before.
[From The Ellen show via People]
Do you guys feel this way, like everything is different and better now that you have a kid or kids? Do you feel like you’re a different person as a mom? Honestly I don’t. I wouldn’t do a single thing to change the fact that I have a son and he’s the most important person in my life, but I feel like the same person with highs and lows at about the same level as they were before. When I think of my life I do separate it into before and after I had him, but it didn’t get instantly amazing, I just had a child to take care of and to love. I was younger than Hoda though and I would have a different perspective if I had my first child around 50 instead of 30.
Here’s the video of Hoda and they showed a clip of Haley walking. Haley is so cute! Hoda didn’t say much about Lauer, she just said hat “after everything went down” they started asking her to fill in and then told her that it was working out well. “It was very organic and real… it just merged into a job.” Ellen asked her if she missed drinking with Kathy Lee and joked “I don’t know how they gave you a baby.” Hoda explained that she still does the show with Kathy Lee at 10 so she’s not missing it too much! They really need to compensate her on par with Matt Lauer’s salary.
Photos credit: Hoda Kotb/Instagram and via WENN