Hoda Kotb is a mom again!
The Today show co-anchor has welcomed her second child: a daughter named Hope Catherine Kotb, she announced via phone on Tuesday’s episode.
A photo of the longtime television journalist holding her new addition came across the screen, with her older daughter, 2-year-old Haley Joy, standing next to her mama and new little sister with a big smile on her face.
“It’s a girl! And her name is Hope!” Kotb, 54, could be heard saying through tears over the phone as her fellow Today personalities wiped their eyes.
The show shared a similar photo of the adorable family to their Instagram account, writing alongside it, “Congratulations are in order for @hodakotb, who adopted a second little girl, Hope Catherine, this week. ?.”
Kotb teased her new addition on her own Instagram account Monday, sharing a snapshot of the words “CHOOSE HOPE” in front of a stunning sky filled with clouds.
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Hoda Kotb Reveals She’s Thinking About a Second Child: “It Is Something That Is Important to Me”
Kotb further raved about her newborn on the phone Tuesday, saying she “can’t believe” this is her new reality and adding that she’s “so happy” and having “so much fun” with her two girls.
“How’s Haley liking having a little sis? How’s she doing? Is she helping?” asked Savannah Guthrie.
“This morning at breakfast, she was trying to feed her her raspberries and I was like, ‘Not yet, babe,’ ” recalled the new mother of two.
Haley has completely taken to her new role, Kotb said: “She was literally marching around saying, ‘I’m a big sister!’ ” — so much so that “she did try to crawl into [Hope’s] bassinet.”
Kotb explained that she thought she was “full” when it came to giving love after welcoming Haley in February 2017, but her experience when she and boyfriend Joel Schiffman brought Hope home proved otherwise.
“Joel and I were standing there when they hand you the baby — and it’s the closest thing to a live birth I think you’ll ever see — [and] in that moment I was like, ‘My God.’ My heart just grew 10 times, it’s amazing,” she said. “I just can’t believe it’s happening, y’all. I can’t.”
The proud mom went on to describe the heart-melting moment Haley first met her baby sister: “We’d been telling her, ‘Baby Hope’s coming,’ and she literally walked up to her and looked at her and she goes, ‘Hope!’ “
“You hope, you pray, you dream about things, and we thought about Hope,” Kotb said of her baby girl’s moniker. “And we named her middle name Catherine after my best friend Karen, her daughter — I think you guys know that her husband passed a little while ago, and Catherine is so super strong.”
Hoda Kotb Releases Children’s Book Inspired by Daughter Haley: It’s “About Saying Thank You”
Kotb told Entertainment Tonight last month that while she and Schiffman, 61, were thinking about another child, they weren’t sure about the timing just yet. “We don’t know when, but it is something that is important to me and to Joel,” she revealed. “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.”
In February 2017, Kotb revealed she had adopted Haley after the baby girl was born on Valentine’s Day that year. In 2007, Kotb battled breast cancer, leaving her unable to conceive. She told PEOPLE in 2017 that she thought she would never be a mother.
“I always had this thing inside me like a voice that I couldn’t quiet,” she recalled to ET. “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 added, “I think the thing we all need to know [is] when your child arrives for you, that child is right on 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.”
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