As a young girl growing up in Nashville, Lauren Braddock Havey, the daughter of legendary songwriter Bobby Braddock, dreamed of her own artistic pursuits: singing, acting, and penning her own music  But above all, one of her greatest dreams in life was to have a baby and be a parent someday. As the "someday" crept up and became her reality, Lauren and her husband Jim were crushed to receive the disheartening news that they were unable to conceive a baby unless they pursued in vitro fertilization, an expensive and uncertain alternative. Lauren's memoir A Journey to the Son (Two Harbors Press; ISBN 978-1-935097-71-6; October 2009), follows Lauren and Jim as they make the brave decision to go through the in vitro process and the white-knuckle journey that ensues.

Lauren has created a masterful memoir of self-discovery and the power of family.  Readers will be touched and united by her experience of what is a decidedly challenging journey, one that is almost tragically derailed (by an amniotic fluid embolism, an extremely rare and most-often fatal obstetric emergency), but which ends happily and triumphantly on the baby's first birthday.

A Journey to the Son transcends the genre of reproduction literature. Lauren shares the rigors of her experiences, the weighty subject matter broached in just the right places by the author's tongue-in-cheek manner, as she delivers amusing observations and anecdotes, and fun chapter titles such as "The Waiting Womb,” “Breast Intentions,” and “Spit Happens”. 

Lauren’s engaging wit and honesty pulls readers in, making her story more than a memoir of fertility treatments, complications, and trauma—Lauren’s story is a celebration of life. “Mine is an against-all-odds story of hope,” she says. “I want people to come away from it with a belief in miracles —or magic or good luck—and have a renewed sense of optimism.”

And Lauren’s unique offerings don’t end at The End of the book! She and Grammy-winning songwriter and producer, Don Henry, have teamed up to make a companion CD to A Journey to the Son, a “folk-rock opera".

To follow Lauren’s quirky parenting blog, “Mud Mama,” visit www.ajourneytotheson.blogspot.com.