Published: Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009 / Updated: Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009 10:33 AM
GROWING FAMILY: The Cuddys' International adoption makes Tega Cay couple parents
TEGA CAY --
Five-year-old Annabel shaped a clump of Play-Doh. Little sister, Tess, followed suit.
“She's the boss,” mom Laura Cuddy said of 3-year-old Tess.
“Annabel's the nurturer,” Laura Cuddy said of her oldest child.
Then the sisters, united through adoption, crossed the family room to the kitchen carting a tray of Play-Doh goodies.
“Mommy, here's a doughnut and a brownie,” a proud Annabel said as her treat passed into Laura Cuddy‘s waiting hands.
Steps away, Tess brought a stranger turned friend a slice of faux pizza complete with a bronze-colored crust. Then the content little girl, who knows no fear, smiled and walked away.
“We're so lucky to have two healthy little girls,” Jerry Cuddy, 49, said of his daughters.
“We're complete now,” Laura Cuddy, 45, said beaming with a smile only known by mothers.
Joining the ranks of motherhood for Laura Cuddy became reality through two adoptions. November is National Adoption Month, a time when adoptive parents give pause to celebrate their road to parenthood and others gain invaluable awareness of an alternative path that makes parenthood possible.
“Adoption provides a permanent family for a child who may not have one,” said Sharon Cole, executive director of Christian Family Services, an adoption agency that originated in Fort Mill before relocating to Rock Hill.
Domestic and international adoptions create stability for children and their new families, Cole said.
“Permanence is important for a child to know that a family loves him unconditionally and will become that child's forever family no matter what.”
Laura and Jerry Cuddy celebrate their wedding anniversary this month with their daughters, but 13 years ago, parenthood wasn't a priority, the couple said.
“We were so wrapped up in our careers,” Jerry said.
More than a decade ago, Jerry was a senior operations manager and oversaw 200-plus people. Laura was a branch manager for a recruiting firm.
“We worked all the time,” Laura said.
Jerry added, “I worked 24 weekends out of the year.”
In 2001, the couple decided their lifestyle didn't work anymore. Laura went into the human resources field.
“I resigned,” Jerry said.
The moves allowed them to reprioritize their lives. They invested time in themselves, traveled, perfected their garden and cooked.
“We doted on our dogs like they were children for two years,” said Laura, who at 37 had an epiphany. “We put our time in our careers and each other. It was, ‘I'm 37 and we had to get cracking if we were going to have children.'”
Time passed.
“It didn't happen,” Laura said about the couple getting pregnant.
New plan
Instead, Laura gave birth to an idea that would forever shape their lives.
“Let's adopt,” Laura recalled telling Jerry.
That game plan led the family to consider foster care, but such a venture would be risky, Laura said.
“You'd fall in love, and they (the children) could be taken away,” she said.
So the family revamped their plan to include international adoption. Confirmation of their plan came when the couple met a woman who adopted two little girls from China.
“We went one Saturday afternoon to her home and fell head over heels in love with the kids and knew China was it,” Laura said.
So, the adoption process and its hordes of paperwork started Aug. 31, 2007. Five months later, the paperwork was done.
“And then we waited,” Laura said.
For six months.
Then they got Annabel.
“The Fed Ex man brought me your picture,” Jerry said to Annabel. “I thought Annabel looked prettier and sweeter than I imagined.”
And he was hooked.
Completing an international adoption is not as easy as it may seem, Cole said.
“Dealing with a foreign country's government is part of the risk for them,” Cole said of perspective adopting parents. “However, in international adoptions, parental rights have been terminated well in advance of a potential adopting family learning of the child's existence. There is no chance of a birth mom saying no.”
But there are other risks, Cole said.
“The medical background on a child is limited,” Cole said. “The adoptive parent is at the mercy of the government of the country from which they're adopting.”
And sometimes judges request additional documents at the last moment or another child is presented to the waiting parents instead of the anticipated child, Cole said.
“Those scenarios are not the norm,” Cole said.
A family unites
Two months after they received Annabel's photo, the Cuddys boarded a plane and left for China.
“Packed to the hilt with Pampers and formula and toys,” a smiling Laura recalled. “I thought, ‘This is really happening' because you think you'll be the one family that will be denied or the paperwork will be lost.'”
Laura was too nervous to sleep during the 26-hour flight. Jerry was a bundle of nerves too, he said. The couple deplaned and was taken to their hotel, where they finally slept and started the next day with more adoption paperwork and another trip.
“We had to get on another plane and fly another one-and-a-half hours to Zhanjiang City to get Annabel out of the orphanage,” said Jerry, who noted eight other couples also were on the plane for the same reason.
What seemed like an eternity later, the couple and others settled on a bus for a 30-minute trek to an orphanage near the South China Sea.
“They took us in a big room,” Laura said. “The nannies came in carrying the babies. Annabel was toward the end. I pointed to her, the nanny pointed to me, and I said, ‘Yes. I know that's my baby.'”
A dream almost realized.
Maybe six steps separated a mother from her daughter.
“I was thinking, ‘Hurry up,'” Laura recalled moments before she held her daughter. “The baby was head to toe in pink. I just remember her looking at me like ‘who are you?' She never cried.
A mother finally held her daughter. And a proud papa stood by videoing.
“I was glad it was all over, and we got our little girl,” Jerry said.
The couple had to stay in China for 10 days in order for the adoption paperwork to be recognized by the government.
“We were there in our hotel room getting to know Annabel,” Laura said. “She was the most amazing, wonderful, perfect baby we'd ever seen.”
China officials recognized the adoption, and a new family celebrated.
“We boarded a plane with our itty bitty,” Laura said. “She was only 14 pounds at 10 months old.”
They made it back to their Tega Cay home in time to introduce Annabel to her first family tradition.
“We got home two days before Christmas,” Laura said. “We were jetlagged, but Christmas was wonderful because we had a child to share it with. Everything was so surreal.”
Adopting again
The family celebrated Christmas 2004 and two more before the Cuddys decided to walk back through adoption's door. By then, China's adoption process had changed, and the wait for a non-special needs child had grown to four years, meaning the Cuddys could either not adopt from China or adopt a baby with special needs, Laura said.
“We can't wait four years,” Jerry recalled saying to Laura. “We're going special needs.”
The adoption process started again during the summer of 2007, and the couple searched the Internet for a waiting child with special needs.
“We knew we wanted a little girl again,” Laura said. “I had too many clothes.”
And they also knew that the second daughter they searched for would have a cleft palate. Then their search ended.
“Five o'clock in the morning,” Laura recalled. “I couldn't sleep. I opened my laptop and her picture had been posted. I'm like, ‘Look at this little girl. That's my baby girl.'”
It didn't take Jerry five seconds to come on board.
“I said, ‘She's the one. She's our second child,'” Jerry said.
This time, Jerry stayed home with Annabel while Laura traveled to China to bring home the couple's newest baby. Laura was united with her daughter, Tess, at a civil affair office in Hefei City.
“Because she had been in foster care,” Laura explained.
And a mother made new paused again as she took in the 27-month old wonder.
“She was a toddler, not a baby,” Laura said. “It hit me how much time I'd missed with her.”
But the lack of time was the least of Laura's problem. During the 10-day required time for China to recognize the adoption, Tess didn't give Laura an easy time. Instead, there was almost non-stop crying for her foster parents.
“She was well loved and taken care of,” Laura said of Tess. “She was old enough to be absolutely aware that she had lost everything she'd ever known. She was heart broken, and it broke my heart to watch her grieve for her foster family.”
Back in the States, the grieving continued.
“It took a full six months for her to accept that we weren't going anywhere,” Laura said. “That she wasn't going to be abandoned again. It took a lot of holding her and telling her, ‘This momma not leave.'”
That was 15 months and another world ago.
Both girls call Laura momma, but Tess calls her daddy ‘baba,' the Chinese word for daddy.
“I was proud of ‘baba,'” Jerry said as he spied the girls. “I like baba.”
And the parents wonder how they made it as long as they did without their daughters and parenthood.
“We intended to have this busy, hectic, messy, silly and fun life when we said we wanted to have kids,” Laura said.
And Jerry has no regrets when two sets of bare feet come running across the kitchen floor or Tess without warning jumps into a stranger's arms.
“I enjoy them,” he said. “I look forward to coming home.”
To his family.
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