Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult.

Blurb from Bookbrowse:

Things break all the time.
Day breaks, waves break, voices break.
Promises break.
Hearts break.

Every expectant parent will tell you that they don't want a perfect baby, just a healthy one. Charlotte and Sean O'Keefe would have asked for a healthy baby, too, if they'd been given the choice. Instead, their lives are made up of sleepless nights, mounting bills, the pitying stares of "luckier" parents, and maybe worst of all, the what-ifs. What if their child had been born healthy? But it's all worth it because Willow is, well, funny as it seems, perfect. She's smart as a whip, on her way to being as pretty as her mother, kind, brave, and for a five-year-old an unexpectedly deep source of wisdom. Willow is Willow, in sickness and in health.

Everything changes, though, after a series of events forces Charlotte and her husband to confront the most serious what-ifs of all. What if Charlotte should have known earlier of Willow's illness? What if things could have been different? What if their beloved Willow had never been born? To do Willow justice, Charlotte must ask herself these questions and one more. What constitutes a valuable life?

Emotionally riveting and profoundly moving, Handle with Care brings us into the heart of a family bound by an incredible burden, a desperate will to keep their ties from breaking, and, ultimately, a powerful capacity for love. Written with the grace and wisdom she's become famous for, beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult offers us an unforgettable novel about the fragility of life and the lengths we will go to protect it.

My thoughts:

I was born with a birth defect myself, though not as severe or life-threatening as Osteogenesis Imperfecta, so this book kind of hit home for me and gave me alot to think about. I didn't really like Charlotte, I thought she was selfish, and she was really only doing this for herself. So life would be easier for HER. And also it's not so much that she says she would've aborted...I just don't know why she waited 6 whole years to go ahead with this lawsuit. I can see why Sean changed his mind and chose to side with the Defense. I also really felt for Piper. And Amelia...alot of her problems were caused by Charlotte. I can only imagine how I would feel, having been born with a birth defect, if I found out people thought I should never have been born.

I finished this book on April 11, 2008