While announcing her new book, Hoda Kotb gave a brief health update on her youngest daughter, Hope.
“I wrote this a while ago, before Hope was, you know, got sick and is on the mend and all that stuff,” the TODAY co-anchor said on Wednesday, Aug. 2, while announcing her latest book, “Hope is a Rainbow.”
The book, inspired by her 4-year-old daughter, Hope Catherine, is out in March, 2024 and available for pre-sale at today.com/books.
“It was based on my daughter, who of course I had dreamt of her and hoped for her and her name just fell in,” Hoda said. “It just reminds me — and she just reminds me — that hope is all around every corner. No matter what you go through, no matter what hardship you endure, there she is.”
In March, Hoda returned to Studio 1A after taking a brief break from the TODAY show to handle a “family health matter.”
The TODAY co-anchor revealed that her daughter Hope had been hospitalized due to an illness.
“My youngest, Hope, was in the ICU for a few days and in the hospital for a little more than a week,” Hoda said at the time. “I’m so grateful she’s home. She is back home. I was waiting for that day to come. And we are watching her closely. I’m just so happy.”
In an emotional moment, Hoda told her TODAY co-anchor Savannah Guthrie that she realized that “when your child is ill” just how much “gratitude you can have for people who helped you out.”
“I’m grateful for the doctors at Weill Cornell who were amazing and the nurses,” Hoda continued. “And I’m grateful to my family, and I’m grateful to friends like you who were there every single day. So, I want to say thank you for that. I love you.”
In honor of National Nurses Week, Hoda once again gave praise to the caretakers who tended to her daughter during her illness.
“I was just thinking about when Hope was in the hospital for one of those days … It was 3 a.m., and I was just sitting in this chair,” Hoda recalled in May on the TODAY Show, while sharing that having to bear witness to her daughter struggling with her health was “surreal.”
“This nurse walked in and — I still remember — put her hand on my back … didn’t even say anything. Just sat there for a minute,” Hoda said. “A lot of what (nurses) do isn’t just about giving the IV and the needles and the stuff and the tests and all those things. It’s more than that.”
While trying to make her daughter Hope feel more comfortable during her hospital say, the mom of two said that she often relied on that same nurse for help and comfort.
“I remember I was there, and I asked for a bath for (Hope). I wanted to give her a bath, and they could only sponge her, and I said, ‘Please, I’m begging you,’” Hoda said at the time. “‘I just want a bath here for my child,’ and I remember we got this little plastic thing, and we put it in the shower and put Hope in it. And I remembered like that tiny thing, but it was everything at that time.”
While Hoda wrote her newest book, “Hope is a Rainbow,” before her daughter Hope experienced a health scare, the TODAY co-anchor says it serves as a constant reminder that “hope is all around you.”
“You know, I was dreaming and praying for a child like her. And then it became a reality. Every night I tell her: ‘I love you. I’m proud of you. I think you’re terrific. And I’m glad you’re mine,’” Hoda told TODAY.com in a recent interview.
“She’s taught me that dreams come true.”
