Hoda Kotb Reveals Her Biggest Fear - Just The Sip

Time is choky successful Hoda Kotb's jam-packed mornings.

Between 3:15 erstwhile her alarm rouses her awake and 7 a.m., erstwhile she takes her spot astatine the Today show desk—the spot she's shared with Savannah Guthrie since 2017 and volition vacate successful aboriginal 2025, she announced Sept. 26—the co-anchor has to acceptable successful a workout, guzzle a greenish juice, ablution and marque her mode done hairsbreadth and constitution connected the show's NYC set.

But she ever pauses for 1 cardinal ritual: Using the diary and pen she leaves retired connected her table, "I constitute 3 things I'm grateful for and 1 large happening that happened successful the past 24 hours," she described to Inside Chic back successful 2016.

Not each point has to beryllium momentous, "For example, I had a meaningful speech with a alien connected the street," she noted. "Or I'm moving successful the parkland and I'm astir to stop, erstwhile an aged feline throws his fists up and yells, 'Keep going, support going.' You go, 'Oh my God, yes, I'm going to support going.'"

The signifier forces affirmative thinking. Explained the seasoned journalist, "You commencement looking for the bully things successful the people of your day."

A self-described optimist, the Oklahoma-born, West Virginia-raised newswoman moves done beingness with heavy gratitude. But each clip she heard that question—Did she person kids?—it felt similar a tiny stab to the heart.

Never caput that she knew the strangers who asked meant nary sick will. Or that she responded gracefully to the inquiry, noting, no, she didn't person children, but she simply adored nieces Hannah and Ella. Still, "I felt a small ouch inside," she told E! News, "because I felt similar thing was missing."

A 2007 conflict with bosom crab near her stronger, but incapable to person kids. "Every clip I swallow those pills, the pills are doing 2 things to me," she said astatine the clip of her people of treatment. "They're warring my crab and they're taking distant immoderate accidental to ever person a kid."

That cognition was rather virtually pugnacious to swallow. "It's hard to choke them down," she said. "But I instrumentality them each day, each night…It's each weird due to the fact that portion of maine feels bittersweet and portion of maine feels similar I got this caller beginning."

"I was acrophobic to adjacent accidental it retired loud, due to the fact that past it felt truthful real," she recalled to People. After she revealed that she'd similar to follow a babe with him, "I said, 'Think astir it for a time oregon a week oregon whatever.'"

His response, instant and certain, near her floored—and assured she'd recovered the cleanable idiosyncratic to genitor with. "He said, 'I don't request a day. Let's get this travel going,'" she recalled. "At that constituent I blubbered similar a baby. It was similar the dam burst."

In autumn of 2016—as she and Schiffman were moving into their archetypal flat together—she started the exertion process. "They said, 'We can't marque immoderate promises. We privation you bully luck,'" she told E! News. That's erstwhile she turned to her trusty journal, jotting down the aforesaid words implicit and over. "Every nighttime I scribbled, 'Please God, if you can…'"

She remembers the infinitesimal that supplication was answered. The exact moment.

To debar having to leave—with exceptions made for doc appointments—baby necessities were ordered in. (Kotb explained them distant to her doorman by saying she was hosting a shower.)

Until 1 day, she ran retired to drawback thing from adjacent drugstore Duane Reade. "A woman conscionable stopped maine connected the thoroughfare and she said, 'Oh, hi,' you know, thing astir the Today amusement and I said, 'Oh, hi,'" Kotb recounted to E! News. Then, she received the question she'd heard endless times before. "She said, 'Do you person children?'" remembered Kotb. "And I conscionable looked astatine her and said, 'Yeah,' I said, 'I person a daughter.'"

The infinitesimal turned her into "a weird handbasket case" she admitted. But she could hardly beryllium bothered by the information that she was sobbing connected a thoroughfare corner. "For the archetypal clip I said the words retired large that I had anticipation I would accidental 1 clip successful my life," she said. "And it was awesome."

Countless awesome moments followed, ranging from the bonzer (baby's archetypal Today appearance!) to those milestones that look rather ordinary, until they're happening to you and you're watching your ain kid basal oregon telephone retired to Dada.

Take the clip Haley attempted her first, somewhat staggering steps. "One day, seriously, she took a nap, she woke up and she started walking," Kotb relayed to DeGeneres. "Like, I didn't adjacent cognize erstwhile it happened oregon however it happened. She was like, 'Ok, bye!'"

Or erstwhile Kotb archetypal heard her belly laugh, a melody she's since described arsenic the "sweetest dependable connected the planet." Even Haley's teething and the long, restless nights that accompanied it were, well, a joy. As she explained to E! News astatine the time, "I've slept for 53 years."

While Kotb acknowledges determination whitethorn beryllium drawbacks to becoming a first-time genitor successful your fifties, "I don't adjacent attraction astir those," she told E! News. "What I cognize is erstwhile you privation thing and you've waited a agelong time, each 2nd counts. Every infinitesimal successful time, you're like, 'Oh my gosh,' and you savor it successful a mode that I'm not 100 percent definite I would person had I been a young mom."

So instrumentality that alien who felt it due to nonstop Kotb a missive detailing wherefore she felt she shouldn't person had kids aboriginal successful life.

With days spent dancing (Haley loves "Despacito", she told Us Weekly, but "she precocious started dancing to a Nationwide commercial—she's similar her mother, she'll creation to anything!") and nights cuddled successful furniture speechmaking Goodnight Moon, Cat successful the Hat and Kotb's ain tome, Kotb feels so #blessed she couldn't imaginable privation for more.

She adjacent managed to crook Hope's terrifying 2023 wellness scare into a metallic lining situation. 

"She's doing overmuch better," Kotb told USA Today successful March. "We've learned however to negociate each of it."

What's more, she continued, "She has shown, and I've learned from her, erstwhile a household is successful a truly hard and scary situation, which we were, and a batch of families person been successful those benignant of situations, with thing truthful scary, you tin really go better. Haley, her older sister, is simply a amended sister. Hope is simply a much resilient idiosyncratic than I ever imagined and I didn't cognize I could emotion her immoderate more."