‘Today’s Jenna Bush Hager Recalls Being Pregnant While Hoda Kotb Was Trying to Adopt

Good friends have difficult conversations, and Jenna Bush Hager recalled one she shared with Hoda Kotb on the Friday, February 6, episode of Today With Jenna & Sheinelle.

“When I started this show, actually, I was hired, and then, like, right away, I found out I was pregnant with Hal,” Bush Hager told her cohost, Sheinelle Jones. “For a minute, I felt like, ‘Oh, gosh, can I do both?’ Whatever. But what I really felt was, I knew that Hoda was in the process of adopting a second babe. And I knew, because she’s my friend, how desperately she wanted a sister.”

Bush Hager took over for Kathie Lee Gifford as Kotb’s fourth hour of Today cohost in 2019. At the time, she and her husband, Henry Hager, already welcomed their two daughters, Mila and Poppy. Kotb, for her part, adopted her eldest daughter, Haley, in 2017 with her ex-fiancé, Joel Schiffman.

“So, I went to her door, and it was probably a month before our show started. I knocked on her office door, and I said, ‘I need to talk to you about something.’ And she goes, ‘Oh, you’re not gonna take the job?’ She thought I wasn’t gonna take the job,” Bush Hager continued. “And I said, ‘No, it’s not that.’ I said — and because, I cried, because there was a level of worry for my friend — I said, ‘No, I’m pregnant, and I know how bad you want another babe.’ And so, we had this beautiful conversation.”

Bush Hager said she gave Kotb some words of advice from her mother, former first lady Laura Bush. “I said to her, ‘My mom always says that everybody gets their baby when they’re supposed to,’” she stated. “And she was, of course, wildly understanding.”

One week after Today With Hoda & Jenna started, Bush Hager said she got a special FaceTime call from Kotb. “Hoda said, ‘I want you to meet somebody!’” she said of how Kotb broke her adoption news to her. “So, one week — I hadn’t even told anybody I was pregnant besides Hoda and Savannah [Guthrie] and some really close friends.”

Kotb and Schiffman adopted their youngest daughter, Hope, in April 2019. Bush Hager and Hager welcomed their son, Hal, that August. “The whole point is, we had a beautiful conversation. Her baby came to her right when the time was [right],” Bush Hager concluded.

Kotb and Bush Hager cohosted the fourth hour of Today together until Kotb exited the NBC morning show in January 2025. Jones returned to Today in September 2025 after taking several months off due to her late husband Uche Ojeh’s health struggles and death in May 2025.

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In December 2025, it was announced that Jones would become Bush Hager’s permanent fourth hour of Today cohost. The series relaunched as Today With Jenna & Sheinelle last month.

Kotb returned to Today‘s Studio 1A on Monday, February 9, to fill in as Craig Melvin‘s coanchor. Savannah has been absent from the show all of last week following the disappearance of her mother, Nancy Guthrie, in Tucson, Arizona. Savannah, Kotb, and Melvin, all stepped down from covering the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy amid the investigation into Nancy’s alleged abduction.

Today With Jenna & Sheinelle, Weekdays, 10a/9c, NBC