"Hoda's a momma again!"
Kathie Lee Gifford is celebrating the new addition to Hoda Kotb's family!
Shortly after Kotb's Tuesday announcement that she and her boyfriend, Joel Schiffman, had adopted their second child, Gifford stopped by The Five and shared her well wishes for her former Today co-host.
"Hoda's a momma again! I'm thrilled about that," she gushed of Kotb's second daughter, Hope Catherine. "I knew that was coming I just didn't know when it was gonna happen."
Gifford also celebrated the happy news on Twitter, retweeting a fan's message that celebrated Kotb's second child, who joins 2-year-old Haley Joy.
"Hope Catherine...a beautiful name! Hope is FULFILLED for @hodakotb! She is ALREADY LOVED!!! ?," the fan tweet read. "Looks like @KathieLGifford is an aunty again!!! Congratulations Hoda, Joel and Haley on your new addition! @HodaAndJenna"
The sweet words came less than two weeks after Gifford said her goodbye to Today after more than a decade on the morning show. Though Gifford is no longer on the NBC show, the rest of Kotb's Today family made sure she felt all the love following her happy announcement.
"HOPE IS HERE! My heart overflows with gratitude and joy for @hodakotb, Joel and Haley - now a blessed family of four!!" Savannah Guthrie wrote on Instagram.
Jenna Bush Hager shared the love too, writing, "I’m filled with indescribable JOY and yes, HOPE for this beautiful family. Happiest—and tear-filled for my @hodakotb!!!"
Carson Daly exclaimed that "God is great," Dylan Dreyer said "words can't describe how happy" she is for Hoda, and Craig Melvin welcomed "baby Hope" to the party.
During her Today announcement, Kotb gushed about expanding her family.
"I feel like I'm going to wake up and God's going to say, 'Hey, remember how you were before all of this? That's the way it is.' ... You hope, you pray, you dream about things and we thought about Hope," Kotb said of her new daughter on Today. "... You know what's funny? You think that you're full. Like, you think that you're full. That’s exactly how I felt with Haley and Joel."
"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," she continued. "But anyway, in that moment I was like, my God, my heart just grew! It’s amazing. Anyway, I can’t believe it’s happening y'all. I can't."
The happy news comes just over a month after Kotb told ET that she and Joel wanted a second child.
"We don't know when, but it is something that is important to me and to Joel," she said. "We like the idea of Haley [having] a sibling because she has had such interesting circumstances to grow up [in], so it would be nice to share it with somebody."
She also revealed that she made the decision to start growing her family in her 50s because "I always had this thing inside me, like a voice that I couldn't quiet."
"It was a voice that [told me I] wanted to be a mom, but I thought it was too late," she admitted. "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. 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."
Watch the video below for more on Kotb's family.
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