Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb, Jenna Bush Hager, Dylan Dreyer and Sheinelle Jones have a lot more in common than just their day jobs. These TODAY hosts are moms, which means that once they head home from Studio 1A, their second shift begins ... and it's often more challenging than the first.
"Motherhood is a sisterhood," said Savannah Guthrie when the women got together at a New York City restaurant to chat. She and her husband, Michael Feldman, are parents to Vale, 9, and Charlie, 7.
"Half of it is just being like, 'Yeah. I’m terrible at that, too.' Or, 'Yeah. I got mad at my kids about that, too,'" Savannah said.
TODAY.com joined the moms of TODAY for an exclusive look at their early Mother’s Day celebration that led to some real talk about the joys and challenges of motherhood. Now we’re sharing some of the moments that didn’t make it on-air.
"None of us know what to do," added Dylan, who is raising Calvin, 7, Oliver, 4, and Rusty, 2, with her husband, Brian Fichera.
"Every time you talk about something that you feel uncomfortable about ..., everybody chimes in and goes, ‘Me too, me too,’” said Hoda, mom of daughters Haley, 7, and Hope, 5.
"I feel like in the 70s or 80s, it was harder to say, 'I feel like I'm failing.' Or, 'This is hard,'" said Jenna. She and her husband Hal Hager have three children: Mila, 11, Poppy, 8, and Hal, 4. Jenna appreciates the fact that she can turn to her coworkers and commiserate.
The women agree that Sheinelle, a mom of three, makes motherhood look "effortless." She is raising 14-year-old Kayin and 11-year-old twins, Clara and Uche, with her husband, Uche Ojeh.
"Are you super strict? How are you doing it?" asked Dylan.
"At the end of the day, often when it just feels like it’s nuts and the room is just, like, spinning, I try to say, 'Okay, I wanna be the mom that I can look back at, I wanna be proud of how I mommed,'" Sheinelle explained. "It’s not necessarily the win that we’re eating at 8:30, 9:00 at night for dinner some nights. But you know what? We’re at the table."
"I think parenting is so hard," said Savannah. "It's so perplexing. It's the most challenging thing you could ever take on."
Dylan described the struggle she feels between the way kids used to be parented and they way parents are supposed to act today.
She laughed that when one of her kids is crying, she knows she's supposed to sit there patiently and say, "I know those are big emotions," but at the same time there's a part of her that wants them to snap out of it and "toughen up" because that's how she was raised. "I'm trying to balance all the things we know and all the things we've learned."
Savannah agreed. She joked that sometimes when her kids are misbehaving, she can sit down and "co-regulate" their feelings. "And sometimes I'm like, 'Out!'"
Switching to a more thoughtful tone, she added, "I always say I want to be both the mom I wished I had, and the mom I had."
"I think that is the key," Sheinelle said. "We’re all doing the best we can. We take what we had and what we liked about it. We bring that with us, and some things that maybe we wanna tweak a little bit."
"I think our job as moms is to be just rock solid," Savannah said. "I'm here and I'm for you. You can count on that. You can take that to the bank. You might be mad at me. That's fine. I'll still be here and I'll still be for you and on your side."
Hoda said, "We work in stressful jobs and we do it with grace. I feel proud of that for all of us."
