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Jenna Bush Hager shares somber message about motherhood as she reveals daughter was baptized hours before Orlando tragedy


UPDATED FEBRUARY 28, 2019 10:08 AM EST

On what should have been a joyous day celebrating Jenna Bush Hager's ten-month-old daughter Poppy's baptism, the 34-year-old Today host shared her thoughts about the terrible Orlando shootings that happened hours later.

Written under a photo of Poppy and her big sister Mila on her Instagram, she wrote, "Hours after we baptized Poppy, one man took the lives of so many mother's children. Hard to hold my precious, innocent babes and know the world is filled with hate."

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Jenna shared this picture of Poppy right after her baptism on Saturday.
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Photo: Instagram/@jennabhager

Poppy poses in her robe with her big sister Mila Photo: Instagram/@jennabhager

She continued: "Let's pray and advocate for our leaders to make change to keep our kids safe." Jenna's message comes on the heels of the shooting at an Orlando, Florida nightclub on Sunday, which has been deemed the deadliest mass shooting in United States history.

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Jenna and her husband Henry Hager were married in 2008. The couple are parents to three -year-old Margaret "Mila" and Poppy. While Jenna shares a lot of precious moments with her daughters on her Instagram account, the Our Great Big Backyard author admits that it has been hard juggling two little girls and a career full of travel.

Jenna says it is getting harder to leave her girls behind for work Photo: Getty Images

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“I travel for work four days a week so thank goodness for Facetime,” she said in an interview with The Tot earlier this year. “I miss them like crazy and it’s getting harder to be away. It’s okay for now but at some point I’ll need to curb the travel.”

She continued: “It's a process and I never feel totally balanced but I think that's okay. After Mila arrived, I had a problem. The show gives us the next day’s briefings the night before at 6pm – right when I have that special hour with my daughter, getting her ready for bath and bed. I’d be getting emails from work and I was trying to do both and it didn’t work. So now I don’t look at my phone for that hour and a half when I’m with her. It’s hard because we are so [technologically] connected these days but I just try to be totally present for my girls.”

Jenna recently hit headlines after trying to set her twin sister Barbara Bush up on a date with Prince Harry. After the incident, Jenna admitted that love connection would have been for more selfish reasons. “The truth is, I don’t know if she’s interested, but Henry [my husband] and I are,” she joked to Access Hollywood. “Wouldn’t you want to be sister-in-law and brother-in-law to a prince? Come on, there’s all those palaces we could borrow.”