“I’m not going to put my worry on her. It’s too much for a kid to carry,” Hoda told People.
“Even just always saying, ‘How are you feeling? You feeling good today, honey?’ is saying, ‘I’m worried,’ because you’re not saying that about your other child. I’ll be discussing how it’s going with the nanny, the nurse, whoever, and if she’s there, she’s like, ‘Am I okay?’ I’m trying so hard to let her be a kid and not have all of the grown-up worries.”
Hoda has previously spoken from the heart about her journey to motherhood, revealing her belief that she had left it too late before deciding to adopt.
The 58-year-old said last year: “I remember never saying out loud that I wanted kids, never, because it was too late,” adding, “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.”
Eventually, she decided to make the brave leap and contact an adoption agency to get the ball rolling for her to become a mother.
“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.
She became emotional when recounting the moment she found out she would be a mother. “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,” she recalled.
“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.’”