Hoda Explains How She Talks to Her Girls About Being Adopted and Their 'Birth Mother Angel'

"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?'"

"And I said at first, 'You weren't born in my tummy, you were born in my heart,' and they were like, 'Oh, OK.'"

"So they got a little older, and all of a sudden I thought, 'I have to tell them every child comes from a tummy.' So I go, 'Well actually, you came from another person's tummy, and so did you,'"

"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.'"

Hoda Kotb described how she has explained adoption to her daughters Haley, 8, and Hope, 6. She first told them, "You weren't born in my tummy, you were born in my heart," which the children accepted. As they grew older, she explained that they came from another person's tummy and introduced the concept of a "birth mother angel" who carried them and gave them to her. Kotb adopted Haley in 2017 and Hope in 2019. She also references the topic in her book "Jump and Find Joy," connecting adoption and life changes to broader themes of jumping into new seasons.

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