"It was about 6:30 on Thursday morning, and I was cooking breakfast in my pajamas. My daughter, Madeleine, 4, was helping by transferring eggs from the cardboard carton into the refrigerator egg box. It's one of the things she does, like pressing the button on the elevator, and licking the cake spoon.

That morning we were both performing our duties with sleepy devotion. Then I put down my whisk and asked Madeleine to throw me an egg.

She peered up curiously from her work. "One of these eggs?"

I nodded.

"But it might break."

"Just throw it, Madeleine. I'll catch it."

We are in the bedroom of an airy Victorian house in North London - all white walls and white floorboards - which has been hired for the four-day catalogue shoot of a prestigious high street brand. A complete stranger is applying blusher to my daughter's chubby cheeks. This could be Ava's ticket to the big league. If today goes well, who knows - next time it could be Asda.

Then the make-up artist frowns: "Oh dear, we've got a bit of a spot, haven't we? Better put some cover-up on that."

"Oh . . . sorry," I mumble, as if I am directly responsible.

Downstairs, the stylist chooses a "look" for Ava - a yellow dress and sun hat - and we are ushered into the cavernous kitchen, where 15 people are standing around trying to look useful.

The photographer is a burly Mancunian who, I guess, is more used to snapping babes than babies. "All right, Dad," he says gruffly (parents at shoots are always addressed as "Mum" or "Dad"), "bring the little princess over here."

"Scientists say that the higher levels of stress experienced by children during the operation could be responsible for the changes.

They found that the babies have important differences in their white blood cells, a crucial part of the immune system.

Prof Mikael Norman, a paediatric specialist, from the Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm, said: "Delivery by C-section has been associated with increased allergy, diabetes and leukaemia risks.

"Although the underlying cause is unknown, our theory is that altered birth conditions could cause a genetic imprint in the immune cells that could play a role later in life."

"For the first time, a case of swine flu has proven resistant to Tamiflu -- the leading pharmaceutical weapon against the new virus, international health officials said Monday.

The resistance was seen in a patient in Denmark, who has recovered.

"The goods news is they just found one," said Dr. Carolyn Bridges of the U.S. Centers for Disease control and Prevention.

It appears the strain developed in a patient who was taking the drug to prevent illness, and it has not spread to others. That's a much better scenario than if the patient had not been taking Tamiflu and picked up a drug-resistant strain already spreading through the public, said Bridges, associate director for science in the CDC's influenza division."

Sad but true: People have always cheated (just take a look at Mad Men--or the Bible). But throw in e-mail, text messaging and Facebook, and these days you have a lot more opportunities to cheat, plus even more confusion about what cheating actually is. Glamour decided to take the mystery out of the equation, asking women to contribute their most intimate-and iffy-might've-been-cheating stories so readers could vote on what crosses the line. Read on, but don't be surprised if you end up feeling some old-fashioned moral outrage!

1. Is it cheating if the relationship isn't official?
"When I was in college, I dated a guy for two years who said he wasn't comfortable with the 'boyfriend' label. Among friends, I called him my 'significant other,' but when I was with him, I just went with the flow and assumed we were exclusive. He was the first guy I slept with, the first I brought home to my parents, the one I spent every holiday and birthday with. Then he started fooling around with my best friend's roommate, and a month later they were a couple. I confronted him, and he said he didn't think we were officially 'together,' so it wasn't cheating. He also felt justified because she and I weren't close friends! Everybody knew but me--that's what hurt the most.”
—NICOLE,* 22, New York City

Is this cheating?
YES: 75%
NO: 25%

"Over the past 30 years, toxic chemicals, like Teflon, plastics, and formaldehyde have increasingly invaded our homes. We used to think these substances were harmless, but a rising tide of evidence has turned the spotlight on chemical exposures as a possible poison to our children's developing brains.

One group of substances of particular concern is a ubiquitous family of hormone twisting compounds, known as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). These substances are the focus of intense scrutiny because: 1) they're found in every home in America 2) they're increasingly linked to human disease 3) our exposure to them has risen in parallel with the surge in autism diagnoses and 4) they may theoretically affect the developing fetal brain."

"Michael Jackson's three children asked to see their father's body in the UCLA emergency room after they were told he was dead, according to the lawyer for Jackson's personal doctor.

"My understanding is that they did" see the body, attorney Ed Chernoff said.

On Monday, the children, ages 7, 11 and 12, were placed under the temporary guardianship of their paternal grandmother, Katherine Jackson, by a Los Angeles judge."

"They're done. Toast. The governor needs his head checked. His wife needs to launch his clothes from the bedroom window. Time for those two to get in line behind that "Jon & Kate Plus 8" couple and call this charade off.

The speculation over the future of the marriage of Mark Sanford, the South Carolina governor, after his recently disclosed affair is likely to die off well before the family's pain. So, too, will the unsolicited lectures -- about his hypocrisy, about her obligations, about the dire state of marriage in general.

Yet if recent research is any guide, the marriage itself has a chance to outlast all of it, the public leer and the private sting, by many years."

"It's been a good month for reckless romance in America. The nation's most famous reality-television father, Jon Gosselin of "Jon and Kate Plus Eight," threw over his marriage for a fling with a 23-year-old schoolteacher. Not one but two prominent conservative politicians torpedoed their careers with public confessions of adultery -- with Mark Sanford's Argentine disappearing act eclipsing John Ensign's accusation of extortion against his lover's spouse.

These irrepressible passions make a fascinating counterpoint to the complaint, advanced this month by two of the nation’s finest essayists, that modern relationships have been drained of danger and purged of eros.

In her new polemic "A Vindication of Love," an assault on the idea of safety in romance, Cristina Nehring complains that contemporary couplings have so restrained true passion that "the poor beast has become as impotent as it is domestic." In a post-divorce essay for The Atlantic, Sandra Tsing Loh autopsies not only her own marriage but those of her peers, a cohort of middle-aged Los Angelenos who've let the quest for security turn them into sexless drudges."