(CNN) -- Rain coats, hair barrettes and jewelry seem harmless. But Consumer Reports magazine says a series of tests uncovered "worrisome levels" of potentially hazardous metals in such children's products currently on store shelves.

In its October 2010 issue, which hits newsstands Tuesday, the magazine says a metal-and-rhinestone hair barrette, a clover-shaped cell phone charm and a vinyl children's rain coat contained heavy metals.

Cadmium and lead levels are the focus of the magazine's report, which is based on tests of more than 30 products using an initial screening method called X-ray fluorescence and outside laboratory analyses.

While lead has drawn attention from product safety advocates for years, cadmium -- a metal commonly found in paint and batteries -- has become a larger concern recently. And the magazine argues that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission needs to develop regulations to limit its use.

"We're concerned it's going to start showing up a lot in other products, such as children's jewelry, or hair barrettes or other products," said Don Mays, Consumer Reports' senior director of product safety and technical policy. "The problem here is that young children in particular have a tendency to put jewelry in their mouth, a necklace, a little pendant, they have a tendency to suck on it."

The magazine says lead levels in a green clover-shaped cell phone charm sold at the retailer Claire's "caused the greatest concern." The charms tested by the magazine contained 100,000 parts per million of total lead -- a quantity that would be illegal if it were considered a children's product.

"Although the charm is not marketed specifically to children 12 and under, it could appeal to that age group or it could be accessible to them if a parent or older child has one," the magazine's analysis says.

Messages left by CNN Tuesday at the Florida and Illinois offices of Claire's were not immediately returned. However, in May, Claire's issued a voluntary recall of a charm bracelet following reports of high levels of cadmium, according to statements posted on its website. The bracelet had been removed from Claire's stores in January.

"Within weeks of these reports, Claire's Stores added procedures requiring all of its suppliers to test for cadmium in children's jewelry," the company said. Testing requirements were already in place for lead and nickel content, according to the statement.

Claire's noted there are no U.S. standards addressing the presence of cadmium in children's jewelry, and said it encouraged the development of such standards.

Consumer Reports says samples of a Revlon Couture Hair Accessory Barrette tested positive for high levels of total cadmium, though potential for significant cadmium exposure through normal use is low.

Even so, Mays says, children could put the barrettes in their mouths.

"The barrette is not marketed to children, but it could interest and be accessible to them," the magazine claims.

Representatives from Revlon did not immediately return calls from CNN seeking comment.

Even when companies change their products to comply with lead limits, older versions the company has replaced might remain on store shelves, the magazine says, suggesting that may have happened with a Kidorable bumblebee raincoat marketed to toddlers and preschoolers.

The company told "Consumer Reports" that it reformulated the coat in 2008 to comply with a new consumer product safety law and began labeling its raincoats and backpacks as lead-free in January 2009. And versions of the coat purchased by the magazine's testers in January and May 2010 contained trace levels of lead well below federal limits.

But the magazine's testers were still able to purchase older versions of the coat in December 2009 and found lead levels that were higher than the legal limit.

The magazine says consumers should look for the newer products and "take a pass on non-labeled hand-me-downs or coats from yard sales."

The magazine also advises consumers to use do-it-yourself screening kits, stop children from playing with cheap metal jewelry and check children's toys against government recall lists.

CNN's Karin Caifa contributed to this report.

Washington (CNN) -- A federal judge Tuesday rejected the Obama administration's request to stay his recently imposed injunction against use of public funds in embryonic stem-cell research.

District Court Judge Royce Lamberth said he could not agree to delay his injunction while the case is appealed.

"Defendants (the government) are incorrect about much of their 'parade of horribles' that will supposedly result from this Court's preliminary injunction," Lamberth wrote in his court order.

The "horribles" he referred to are an extensive list of research projects outlined by the National Institutes of Health that will have to be shelved if a stay is not granted.

"Congress has mandated that the public interest is served by preventing taxpayer funding of research that entails the destruction of human embryos," Lamberth said

"In this court's view a stay would flout the will of Congress as this Court understands what Congress has enacted...Congress remains perfectly free to amend or revise the statute. This Court is not free to do so," Lamberth concluded.

Justice Department lawyers informed Lamberth they intend to appeal his ruling.

The ruling, which had stunned the administration, prevents any further medical research that involves the use of taxpayer dollars to fund projects requiring the destruction of embryos.

On August 27, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the 2009 ruling of a special vaccine court denying a link between vaccines and autism.

(Parenting.com) -- On playgrounds and at playdates, it's hard to have a conversation about childhood immunizations without the word autism popping up. In fact, a recent study published in the journal Pediatrics showed that one in four parents is concerned that vaccines can cause autism.

It's no wonder when the Internet and television airwaves are full of personal stories that raise a question about the link. But the study that started the autism vaccine scare was recently retracted by the prestigious journal that published it 12 years ago, and the lead researcher had his medical license pulled.

Given these developments, some experts hope we have finally reached the end of the debate.

The Backstory

In 1998, a British gastroenterologist, Andrew Wakefield, M.D. and his colleagues published a paper in the British medical journal The Lancet suggesting that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine might cause symptoms associated with autism.

"Wakefield had a case study of eight children who had received the MMR and then developed symptoms of autism," says Paul Offit, M.D., chief of infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "He also believed they had abnormal intestinal tracts and proposed a syndrome -- linking intestinal inflammation from receiving the MMR with the development of autism."

Though Wakefield acknowledged in the paper that "he could not say whether the MMR caused autism," says Offit, "it opened the door for the notion that a vaccine could cause autism. It was the Royal Free Hospital, an excellent hospital in London, it was published in the oldest medical journal, and it was off to the races."

In England, thousands of parents refused to vaccinate their children, resulting in hundreds of hospitalizations and three deaths in Ireland from measles.

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What the Research Shows

Since that time, 18 controlled epidemiological studies have investigated the possible connection between autism and vaccines, and "they have all come back showing the same thing," says Alison Singer, founder and president of the Autism Science Foundation, and a mother of a 13-year-old with autism. "There is no link between vaccines and autism."

Those studies took up two primary theories: Wakefield's hypothesis that the MMR vaccine was linked to autism, and another that thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative found in some vaccines, was the culprit.

In a 2004 report analyzing the research into the possible connections, the Institute of Medicine (the organization charged with advising the nation on public health concerns) concluded: "the body of epidemiological evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship" between both the MMR vaccine and thimerosal, and autism.

That same year, 10 of the 13 authors of the Wakefield study retracted it.

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What's New

In February The Lancet, in an historic moment, retracted Wakefield's entire study after an independent government review concluded that he had acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in conducting his research.

This included doing unnecessary and painful procedures on the children and not disclosing the fact that he had been paid as a consultant to two attorneys representing parents who believed their children had been harmed by the MMR vaccine.

In May 2010, Wakefield was banned from practicing medicine in his native UK.

"This retraction represents the death of a hypothesis," says Offit. "Parents should be reassured that a choice not to get a vaccine will in no sense lessen the risk of autism, and will only increase the risk of disease."

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The Dilemma Parents Face

"The [Wakefield] study did a lot of harm when it was originally published," says Singer. "As a result of it, I split the vaccine for my second daughter, but a lot of people went farther, not vaccinating at all, and that's unfortunate, because what we know about vaccines is that they save lives."

Still, it's more common today for parents to know a child with autism and than to know anyone who suffered or even died from one of the diseases vaccines prevent.

For them, avoiding anything that they feel might lead to autism can seem safer than choosing to get a vaccine for diseases that seem unlikely.

Notable figures like actress Jenny McCarthy, who believes her son's autism may have been caused by vaccines, also help lend credibility to the idea that there is a link between the two.

"The reason these diseases are so rare is because of immunizations," says Gary L. Freed, director of General Pediatrics at the University of Michigan School of Medicine. "I took care of a child who died of measles encephalitis because he was not vaccinated. It was a horrible death that was needless and preventable, and those parents never forgave themselves for not vaccinating their child."

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"Choosing not to get a vaccine or to delay vaccines is not a risk-free choice," agrees Offit .

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concludes that 2008's measles outbreak in San Diego -- the largest in almost a decade, triggered by an unvaccinated child who'd traveled to Europe -- struck people who had purposely not been vaccinated against the disease.

"You don't have to live in the developing world to get measles," says Offit. "It's all boiling just under the surface. Drop your guard and these diseases come back with a vengeance."

Making a Good Choice

Amy Pisani, the executive director of Every Child By Two, an organization that advocates for childhood immunization, understands the hesitancy some parents feel when they enter their pediatrician's office.

"I was pregnant at the time Wakefield came out, and I was nervous myself. I would listen to these presentations and worry, because it really sounded legitimate, and it was confusing. But I was really fortunate, because I worked at Every Child By Two, and I had access to all these experts at the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to help me make a good choice."

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Pisani's organization, originally founded to train nurses and help low-income parents learn about the free vaccination program run by the government, now spends 70 percent of its time addressing parental safety concerns about vaccines and the importance of timely vaccinations.

The organization has launched a website (vaccinateyourbaby.org) dedicated to getting the research in the hands of parents, so, like Pisani, they can get the most medically sound information available before making a decision.

"It's a parent's responsibility to be concerned for their child," says Freed, "and we as a society have a responsibility to make sure there is factual information available to parents."

Nora Fitzpatrick, mother to two in Gaithersburg, Maryland, whose younger daughter was diagnosed with autism at the age of two, says the retraction of the Wakefield study has helped her to better answer her friends' questions about whether to vaccinate.

"I feel a responsibility to be informed because we get asked so often," says Fitzpatrick. "When the retraction came out, I was super excited. Now I explain that the Wakefield study is how it all got started, and how it's been retracted. It's a huge relief that it's sort of definitive now."

Singer agrees.

"We were right to do the studies, we were right to look at the link. But now those studies have been done, and the data is very clear. We looked, and the answer wasn't there."

Still, Singer and Offit agree that until there is an answer, people will still ask questions about vaccines.

"We're never going to be rid of the vaccine hypothesis completely," says Singer, "until we know what does cause autism, that's why it's so important for more research to be done." Stay tuned.

Parenting.com: Your Most Common Vaccine Questions, Answered

Good Sources of Information Online:

AAP

The American Academy of Pediatrics's website provides tons of info vaccines, up-to-date schedules, safety concerns and the latest vaccine news.

Every Child By Two

This advocacy organization works to educate parents about vaccines and their safety. There's also a quick history of vaccinations that illustrates how far we've come.

CDC

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's comprehensive site, with all the latest news updates, information on each vaccine and recommended schedule.

Autism Science Foundation

The Autism Science Foundation provides funding to scientists and organizations conducting, facilitating and promoting autism research.

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(Health.com) -- Terminally ill cancer patients struggling with anxiety may get some relief from a guided "trip" on the hallucinogenic drug psilocybin, a new study suggests.

The study included 12 patients who took a small dose of psilocybin -- the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms" -- while under the supervision of trained therapists. In a separate session, the participants took a placebo pill, which had little effect on their symptoms.

By contrast, one to three months after taking psilocybin the patients reported feeling less anxious and their overall mood had improved. By the six-month mark, the group's average score on a common scale used to measure depression had declined by 30 percent, according to the study, which was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

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In follow-up interviews with the researchers, some patients said their experience with psilocybin gave them a new perspective on their illness and brought them closer to family and friends.

"We were pleased with the results," says the lead researcher, Charles Grob, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, in Torrance, Calif.

Notably, the psilocybin did not aggravate the patients' anxiety or provoke any other unwanted effects besides a slight increase in blood pressure and heart rate.

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Grob's findings are "important because he's showing that you can administer these compounds safely to cancer patients with anxiety," says Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore.

"They're not substances that should be used recreationally or casually, but nonetheless it appears that we can conduct research with these compounds safely," adds Griffiths, who was not involved in the study but has researched the therapeutic effects of psilocybin. (He and his colleagues are currently enrolling patients in a similar study that will use larger doses of the drug.)

Researchers investigating the therapeutic potential of psilocybin and other hallucinogens have been keen to demonstrate the safety of the drugs in clinical settings.

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Psychiatrists and psychologists began exploring the effects of hallucinogens on the mood and anxiety of dying patients in the 1950s, but the research stopped abruptly when psilocybin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and other mind-altering drugs were outlawed in the 1970s.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a handful of small studies involving hallucinogens since the 1990s, but the field is still emerging.

Grob's study is the first of its kind in more than 35 years. It was funded by private foundations and the Heffter Research Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, that has been a major sponsor of the second-generation hallucinogen research.

The patients in the study were all close to death (10 of the 12 have since died), and they had all diagnoses of anxiety or acute stress relating to their prognosis.

"We were really looking for people who were really struggling with the predicament that they found themselves in," Grob explains.

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During the psilocybin sessions, which lasted six hours, the patients lay on a couch and listened to music through headphones.

Although they spoke only briefly to the therapists while under the influence of the drug, they continued to meet periodically with the research staff for six months to discuss their experience and to fill out questionnaires assessing their mood and anxiety levels.

"I think we've established good grounds for continuing the research," Grob says. "That's the goal right now, just to develop more studies."

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Copyright Health Magazine 2010

(CNN) -- Officials in Bangladesh are working to control an anthrax outbreak that has infected nearly 300 people since its first detection two weeks ago.

The country was put on high alert Sunday as the bacterial disease continued to spread between animals and people, Bangladesh's official news agency reported.

Committees across the country -- made up of livestock officials and medical personnel -- have been formed to spread an awareness campaign to prevent, detect and treat anthrax infections, according to the Sangbad Sangstha national news agency.

The disease was first detected last month in northwestern Sirajganj district, where 38 villagers reportedly became infected after consuming beef from sickened cows, the news agency reported. It then spread to neighboring districts.

Fisheries and Livestock Minister Abdul Latif Biswas said Sunday that a half million livestock vaccines will be sent to affected areas. Biswas told a news conference that there is an adequate number of doses to treat infected animals and people.

So far, none of the 298 people infected with disease has been sickened critically, Mahmudur Rahman, the director of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research, told the news agency.

As of Sunday, 33 cows and 17 goats have died of the disease, and another 217 animals have been infected since the outbreak began August 18, the livestock ministry told the news agency. All livestock entering the capital, Dhaka, are being tested at four entry points, and residents are being urged not to sell or eat meat from diseased cows.

According to the Mayo Clinic, anthrax spores are formed by naturally occurring bacteria in soil in most parts of the world. The spores can remain dormant for years until they find their way into a host -- usually wild or domestic livestock. Most human cases of anthrax occur as a result of exposure to infected animals or their meat or hides.

(Health.com) -- You think you'd feel self-conscious around a supermodel style expert. And yet meeting with 37-year-old Molly Sims -- who rose to fame as a model for Sports Illustrated and Victoria's Secret and a host of MTV's "House of Style" -- leads to anything but.

In her easy Kentucky accent, Molly talks work and play: how she's recently added jewelry designer to her résumé with her new line Grayce by Molly Sims, why her strict workout regimen lets her not stress about what she eats, and what she's most grateful for.

Q: You're a believer in healthy eating, right?

A: I think I've done every crazy diet there was in the beginning, but it's weird: I'm thinner now than I was when I was modeling. I don't obsess about it. I have a really strict regimen of exercise, so I pretty much can eat what I want...but, no, I hate saying that.

Q: Because then people think you're just eating pizza and chocolate cake.

A: 'Cause I'm not. No, I work out for an hour to an hour-and-a-half, five to six days a week, hardcore. I mean, my butt was up at 7:30 this morning and at [the studio of trainer] Tracy Anderson to work out at 8. They're great, they push you.

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Q: You're from Kentucky. Is there anything about you that speaks of that?

A: I still love red velvet cake. My mom FedExes a red velvet cake she makes from scratch to me every birthday. And she walked four miles a day for 25 years. She always said, you should take care of yourself, you shouldn't let yourself go. That's a very Southern thing. I can remember watching her doing Jack LaLanne on the back of a chair, for sure! The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

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Q: What do you do to feel healthy?

A: I watch my wheat intake. I drink a hot lemon water when I wake up. It cleanses your palate. And I dry brush, which is great for your circulation. Oh my God, it's amazing.

Q: You're full of great health tips!

A: I should have a blog! If you want to get into a dress, watch your salt intake for three days. Don't down soy sauce and sushi. I think if more people were healthy, they'd have a better outlook on life.

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Q: How do you describe your style?

A: Probably eclectic chic. It's kind of done-undone.

Q: Is there any celeb that you wish you could get your hands on and make over?

A: Oh! I know a celebrity! Britney Spears. I mean, that girl is so cute. [I'd go] monochromatic. I would take away the boots, the tank tops. She's so pretty -- she just needs help with dressing. She gets too many trends going at once.

Q: What's your go-to outfit?

A: A boyfriend jacket, a beautiful T-shirt, and great jeans. If you know me well, you'll know what mood I'm in, how good I'm feeling about myself [by how I dress].

Q: What might you wear when you're feeling good about yourself -- or not?

A: I'll cover more when I'm not feeling good about myself. I like things bigger, an oversized cardigan or jacket. It's probably not the most flattering. Even though, in my mind, it makes me look thinner. [Laughs.]

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Q: What style of clothing is flattering on every body?

A: A Diane von Furstenberg black wrap dress. It's chic, it's flattering, and you can wear it day and night. I have several that I've worn for years! It's the material. You don't have to iron it, you can take it on a trip, it looks great in a meeting.

Q: What's your take on women who've gone under the knife?

A: I'm not not a proponent of cosmetic surgery. I had braces for two-and-a-half years, and I promise you, I wouldn't be the same girl if I didn't. I would not have smiled. If somebody's nose or boobs has bothered them their entire life and affects their positive outlook, who am I to tell them not to do it? [But] I think Heidi Montag is a really sick girl, something is off. You don't get F-size boobs. And I'm not judging her. I feel sorry for her.

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Q: Your jewelry line is called Grayce because your mom said you should be graceful and grateful. What are you most grateful for now?

A: My parents. My mom's my best friend. It doesn't matter what premiere or red carpet ... at the end of the day, what I really treasure is my friends and family. My mom was sick last year, and I still want to have my first baby with her and have her help me pick out my wedding dress. Fame's not real. It's awesome, but not real. I think it's awesome when you get to travel somewhere randomly. What I think is shitty is that people are always criticizing you. I mean, God bless Jen.

Q: Jen?

A: Aniston. Like, so hard. All these critiques, always. I know her really well, she's this awesome girl, but it's just so hard. I give her credit.

Q: As a model, you've probably had to endure a lot of criticism. How have you dealt with it?

A: Once you've been a model, you've had pretty much every rejection: Your shoulders are too big, your calves are too big, you're too skinny, you're too fat. Honestly, at this point, I love myself more than what anyone else thinks. I can't sit here and say, "I don't care." That would be a lie. But as you get older, it doesn't quite mean as much, you know?

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Copyright Health Magazine 2010

(CNN) -- West Nile Virus has killed 15 people in northern Greece and sickened 158 others, the Hellenic Centre for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday.

Thirty-nine people were hospitalized Friday, nine of them in intensive care, the agency said. Another 116 patients have been treated and discharged from the hospital.

West Nile Virus is usually transmitted by infected mosquitoes or blood transfusions. Severe symptoms can include high fever, headache, neck stiffness, stupor, disorientation, coma, tremors, convulsions, muscle weakness, vision loss, numbness and paralysis.

About 80 percent of people infected with the virus show no symptoms, health officials say.

Authorities in central Macedonia, in northern Greece where most cases have been reported, said they would step up spraying programs in an attempt to ward off mosquitoes.

Authorities also said they are taking steps to prevent transmission by blood transfusions. Blood donations in regions at high risk for West Nile Virus have been canceled and people leaving the area are encouraged not to donate blood for up to 28 days.

Sporadic cases of the disease have been found throughout Europe since the 1960s.

(Elle.com) -- Are they one of your success stories?" I asked, pointing behind Dr. H. to a large silver-framed photo of two fat-cheeked babies, identical twins. Dr. H. was my fertility doctor, and this was our first appointment.

"They're my grandkids," he explained, then laughed. "But everyone always says the same thing" -- he held up his hands, like someone appealing to a higher power, and shook them dramatically -- " 'We don't want twins!' "

Hilarious, I thought. Dr. H.'s reaction suggested that anyone desperate enough to visit him would take a kid any way she could get one.

"But I really don't want twins," I said. "I already have a 3-year-old, and money is tight. One more is all we can handle."

"Welllll," Dr. H. replied, "given your age, we need to be aggressive. So I'd recommend going right to IVF. But if you want, we can transfer only one embryo."

For that privilege, I had my insurer to thank, surprisingly enough: Since my policy covered three rounds of IVF, Dr. H. said, we could be conservative with the number of embryos we implanted each time.

"Great," I replied, with a sigh of relief. "Then let's get started."

I left the consultation feeling excited and optimistic. Here was a science so precise that Dr. H. could choose among outcomes -- you don't want twins? Fine. I'll just implant one embryo.

I was in control, finally. I'd spent months taking my temperature, monitoring my cervical mucus, and visiting an acupuncturist, wondering all the while if these efforts were any more effective than chanting a spell: Bibbity, bobbity, boo!

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What if we did just one embryo?

One thing I'd somehow forgotten to ask Dr. H. about was my chance of becoming pregnant using a single embryo. According to research I'd done before seeing him, I knew that the live birth rate for in vitro fertilization for a 43-year-old like me was less than one in 20, and that was when the average number of embryos implanted was three. So going with only one had to worsen the already poor odds, didn't it? But I kept silent.

Not only did I manage not to know what I knew, but I even imagined that I had an advantage over the other women sitting in Dr. H.'s waiting room reading outdated copies of Fit Pregnancy and Parenting (selections that struck me as insensitive as offering Gourmet to bulimics). I'd already proven I could get pregnant; not only that, my husband and I conceived our 3-year-old son immediately after I stopped using birth control.

And we seemed to have luck on our side: The crappy health plan supplied by my husband's nonprofit employer paid for three IVF cycles. As I said to him after meeting with Dr. H., what did we have to lose?

Within three months, however, I'd abandoned the one-embryo idea almost as if I'd never heard of it. A few friends my age had implanted as many as five embryos at once, with no baby to show for it.

I was crazy, not to mention arrogant, they said, to think I could get pregnant with one. I also found out that the fine print on our crappy insurance policy said that to be eligible for IVF, you first had to try the more basic intrauterine insemination (in which my husband's sperm would be injected into my uterus during a hormone-enhanced ovulation). By the time I was able to have an embryo implanted, who knew how much older, and less likely to conceive, I'd be?

So following our insurer's rules, I did the turkey-baster routine, and after 12 days headed back to Dr. H.'s office for a pregnancy test. I'd already gotten a negative result at home, and I just wanted to move onto the high-tech stuff. "It's bad news, isn't it?" I greeted Dr. H. when he called later that day.

"Actually, no," he said. "You're pregnant. In fact, your levels are quite high." He paused. "And I'm afraid it might be twins." He sounded apologetic; maybe he'd registered my objections after all.

I reminded him that when we did the insemination, he'd said that although I'd produced four follicles -- as opposed to the one generated naturally -- it was "highly unlikely" that more than one of the eggs would be fertilized. (Later, I'd realize that the ovulation-induction drug Dr. H. suggested I take, Gonal-f, comes with a higher chance of multiples than the more common Clomid. He'd breathed not a word of this to me.)

"We won't know anything for sure until we do a sonogram," Dr. H. tried to reassure me. "And a third of the time, one of the twins vanishes anyway. So it's too early to tell. But you're pregnant -- that's the important thing.... Congratulations." It came out sounding like an admonition.

Or perhaps he was opposed to abortion and trying to steer me away from the procedure known as "selective reduction," in which one or more fetuses in a multiple pregnancy is terminated. I had no way of knowing.

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Panicked, unprepared, doubtful

Hanging up the phone, I waited for a wave of feeling to break over me. When I'd learned that I was pregnant with my son, I couldn't stop smiling for days.

Walking down the street, sitting across the table from a friend, my face was involuntarily lit. But now I felt panicked, unprepared, and doubtful about my ability to handle what fate had thrown at me.

It happened to be my husband's and my anniversary. We'd been together long enough that we didn't feel obliged to mark the occasion with flowers or candlelit dinners, but as he walked in the door that night, the timing suddenly seemed serendipitous. "Happy anniversary!" I said, pressing my lips to his. "I'm sorry I didn't get you anything. Oh, there is this one little thing...." I stared coyly up into his face.

He lifted his eyebrows. "You're pregnant?"

I nodded, but already my choice of words, "one little thing," rang ominously in my ears. I trapped my bottom lip between my teeth. "Apparently my levels are high. He thinks it might be twins."

My husband pulled back from me with the abruptness of someone who's just learned he's been betrayed. "Bettina, we can't handle twins," he said firmly.

"Well, we could if we had to. People have a toddler and twins all the time."

"I told you when you started all this that I didn't want twins."

I nodded. He had said that. Unlike me, he'd been reluctant to have a second child. Our son was everything we could've wished for -- funny, smart, a source of regular joy. As he got older, our lives got easier.

We took trips and found time for exercise and going to movies; we even had space in our two-bedroom apartment for guests. But at that moment, I didn't want to hear any of that. I'd always wanted two children, and I countered with my best argument: Preserving our lifestyle seemed like a self-centered reason to deprive our son of a sibling.

Selective reduction had been my contingency plan, yet I'd never thought -- or felt -- through actually using it. I didn't even know how the procedure was done. Now I was horrified at the idea of terminating one of the fetuses growing inside me by injecting potassium chloride into his or her heart.

With my son, I'd witnessed the step-by-step progress from blip to eight-pound, two-ounce boy, marveling at the increasingly recognizable sonogram images, poring over the weekly e-mail announcements from a pregnancy website: Your baby now has fingernails, your baby is now the size of a lemon, a banana, a melon. ... And while I strongly believed in women's right to have an abortion, the unlucky fetus destined for elimination wasn't merely an abstract potential life, or an accident.

He or she was the product of my love for my husband, a life we'd made together on purpose. This fetus had an identity, not least as someone's twin. "Selective reduction" was Orwellian; I knew I was ending what could be a life.

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Awake at night

I also worried that the surviving child would be scarred by the loss. Perhaps the fetus would register the cessation of the heartbeat in the neighboring sac, the stilling of the fluttery movements.

Could the proximity of decaying fetal tissue infuse my womb with the specter of death? If the chosen one ended up with mental illness or autism, would I always blame myself for having a reduction? All this may seem melodramatic, but I've heard about identical twins holding hands in utero; I've seen the secret language and private reality shared between even fraternal twins.

This kept me awake at night, inflected my dreams with shadowy predators. Meanwhile, I learned that the optimal time to reduce was between 11 and 13 weeks -- and a chorionic villus sampling (CVS) was recommended beforehand to ensure that the fetus retained had the best chance of being healthy.

I had to make these appointments while deciding what to do. On the Web, I found a small, controversial message board on which veterans of reductions offered guidance. I searched among the threads for a local doctor willing to perform a two-to-one reduction -- many won't -- feeling as if I were searching for a back-alley abortion.

"But neither of us even likes our brothers and sisters that much," my husband persisted. In fact, if it weren't for the affection between our son and his cousins, he went on, we'd rarely see our siblings.

Eventually, though, it was the sweetness of the cousins' connection that persuaded my husband to agree to a second. Then, when he had one foot onboard, I dragged the rest of him into the world of assisted reproduction -- about which he knew just enough to issue the dictum against twins. Don't worry about it, I'd bluffly assured him. If we end up with more than one, there's a way to take care of it. But I was certain that wasn't going to happen.

During my weekly visits to Dr. H.'s office over the next month, I watched the two little sacs on the sonogram darken and grow, develop heartbeats and vaguely human outlines. "Can you turn the screen away, please?" I asked, tears pooling in the corners of my eyes. "I don't want to get attached."

Dr. H. turned it toward me and said sternly: "Start getting attached."

I'd already asked him about selective reduction. A colleague of his had told me that many women do it, and that it was no more dangerous than amniocentesis. But Dr. H. contradicted her: The odds of losing the entire pregnancy were about 10 percent, he said, and he didn't do reductions himself.

I kept telling myself I should be happy to be pregnant at all: After wanting another child for the better part of two years and trying and failing for 12 months to have one on my own, I'd conceived! But I grew increasingly despondent as the deadline for terminating one of the pregnancies loomed.

My husband was convinced that twins would radically change our lives for the worse. We'd have to leave our beloved neighborhood for a place with cheaper rents and better public schools -- there was no way we could afford private education for three kids.

We'd kiss goodbye any hope of career advancement, at least for the foreseeable future. To his list, I added the loss of my income, necessary to meet our expenses. I couldn't see how I'd be able to resume working after the birth since we could never afford full-time help, and -- no matter how well they napped -- two infants wouldn't leave much time for anything else.

But, but, but...Wasn't sacrifice part of what being a parent was all about? Was it more accurate to say that we didn't want to handle twins, rather than we couldn't? Perhaps the answer to that question would've been yes, had my husband and I been two totally different people.

Because beyond the practical concerns, I knew that we didn't have the energy, the patience, or the fortitude to juggle two infants in addition to our son. As it was, I sometimes felt like a superhero, and my husband and I fought over sharing the responsibilities of one child.

Even in the best of times we struggled not to bark out demands and to keep from seeing the other as the enemy. But struggle we did, because the life we'd made -- our marriage, our community of friends, and especially our son -- seemed worth the effort. I seriously doubted that this fragile equilibrium could withstand the stress of three young children.

And as much as I wished the situation were different, it wasn't. I know it sounds selfish, but I wanted to protect the well-being of the people already in my life -- my son, my husband, and, yes, myself.

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Feeling guilty, irresponsible

Every sign of the new lives growing inside of me -- my tightening waistband, my tender breasts, my queasiness -- felt like punishment for my baby lust and an indictment of my failings as a mother. Since I was certain I couldn't manage two babies, how could I be sure I wouldn't be overwhelmed by one?

I entertained dark daydreams of miscarrying both children as a way out of this intractable situation. I was furious at myself for closing my eyes to the risks of multiples -- I felt as irresponsible as someone who kept getting "accidentally" pregnant because she forgot to insert her diaphragm.

When a woman is carrying three or more fetuses, the medical argument in favor of selective reduction is clear. A 1999 study compared the outcomes of 143 cases of triplets reduced to twins with 12 sets of triplets and 812 sets of twins. A quarter of the women carrying triplets lost the entire pregnancy, versus 6.2 percent of those who reduced triplets to twins, which was in line with the miscarriage rates for the nonreduced twins.

Further, a quarter of the triplets were severely premature (and all had attendant complications), compared with 5 percent of the triplets reduced to twins.

Beyond the improved medical outcomes, the daunting financial, emotional, and practical challenges of raising triplets -- and the potential psychic toll of being one of three (from the developmental delays connected to prematurity to a deficit of parental attention at a young age) -- makes reducing triplets pretty uncontroversial.

Not so twins. Plenty of people have twins and manage to care for them. And there has been no real medical rationale for going from two to one, although recently that has changed somewhat.

The risks of selective reduction have declined since it was pioneered by New York obstetrician Mark Evans 26 years ago, when the odds of losing the entire pregnancy were roughly 10 percent (as Dr. H. told me). But now the figure for two-to-one reductions is roughly 3 percent, according to Evans.

Studies have shown that after a reduction, pregnancies tend to proceed as if a woman had begun with whatever number of fetuses she ends up with. So given the roughly 8 percent chance of miscarrying twins, compared with 4 percent for a single baby, a woman who has a reduction cuts in half her odds of losing her pregnancy.

Moreover, national health data show that twins are more than five times as likely to be born premature before 37 weeks, seven times more likely to be born prior to 32 weeks, and nine times more likely to have a low birth weight. In a paper examining these risks in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, Evans and his coauthors concluded: "Our data suggest that the likelihood of taking home a baby is higher after reduction than remaining with twins."

But the medical benefits didn't drive our decision -- which was true among posters on the selective reduction message board: Even if they said they hoped to maximize their chances of "taking home a baby," they didn't think friends and family would buy it.

"Don't tell anyone," they advised. "If you already mentioned that you were pregnant with twins, say that the other one vanished." I'd told a few friends that my hormone levels might indicate two fetuses, but now I lied, saying my doctor had been mistaken.

"Thank God," my sister-in-law exclaimed. She told me about a single friend who got pregnant with artificial insemination and was considering aborting one of the fetuses. "Can you imagine? It's like there will always be this secret from the remaining one."

"Well, can you blame her?" I snapped. "It'd be hard enough to have one on your own, but two?" What I wanted to add but didn't was that despite working part-time and having a full-time nanny and a relatively helpful husband, my sister-in-law complained incessantly about how exhausted she was caring for two kids, two kids who were three years apart.

I was taken aback by the ferocity of her judgment - particularly since I'd heard her argue just as fervently for a woman's right to choose. But I'd begun to realize that people viewed selective reduction in its own category: You weren't terminating an unwanted accidental pregnancy; you were making a "Sophie's Choice" between siblings, something a good mother would do only with a gun to her head.

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A silent journey

My husband told me he'd support whatever choice I made, but for him, there really was no choice. Our twins weren't part of God's plan, he reasoned (or rationalized?). They were the product of artificial insemination.

If we'd become pregnant with twins naturally, would we be making the same decision? I didn't know. All I knew was that ultimately, I didn't think we could have twins and remain an intact, happy-enough family.

Perversely, I held out hope that the CVS would show that one of the fetuses had an abnormality. But when the genetic counselor called with the results, she informed me, in the chipper voice of a weatherwoman reporting sunny skies, that both my babies were healthy.

My mother came into town to watch our son while my husband and I traveled to a neighboring state for the reduction. She was one of the few people I'd confided in. Initially, she'd offered to help take care of the twins if we kept them.

"Maybe you could move closer, or I could move there...." And then the conversation trailed off, as we both realized the unlikelihood of either option. Just as my husband and I weren't the types who could easily roll with however many babies came our way, my mother wasn't the type to uproot her existence to care for her grown daughter's children. (I couldn't imagine accepting my mother's offer, anyway. For better or worse, people in my family take care of themselves.)

Now, as my husband and I headed out the door, my mother briefly hugged me and assured me that we were doing the right thing, which unleashed the tears I'd been fighting back all morning. "Bye, sweetie!" I called over my shoulder to my son in a wobbly voice.

"Bye, Mommy," he replied, happily building a block tower with Grandma.

My husband and I passed the hour-and-a-half car ride mostly in silence. Every once in a while, he'd reach over and squeeze my hand. "It's going to be okay," he said a few times.

After another stretch of silence, I asked, "Could you say a prayer when they're doing it?"

He glanced at me, looking slightly surprised. "Sure. Of course." Neither of us is very religious, but I wanted God to know that he or she, or whatever form God took, hadn't been forgotten.

There was a long wait. I worked on a complicated cable-knit sweater I was making for our son, happy my hands and brain were engaged. After the first hour, my husband said he wished he had some knitting too.

Occasionally, I'd scan the faces of the other women in the crowded waiting room. Though the coffee tables here were also piled with copies of Fit Pregnancy and Parenting, hardly anyone was looking at them. Instead, they watched a TV tuned to a talk show or chatted quietly with a companion.

"Bettina Paige?" called a nurse.

Clutching the knitting needles, my hands froze. I could just not answer, I thought. We could get back in the car and drive home. We could keep both babies and make it work, just like we'd absorb and face all the other challenges that were bound to arise: the death of our parents, financial struggles, our own mortality. Instead, I took a deep breath and reached for my husband's hand. "Here," I said.

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Our doctor told us that she'd take into account any gender preference if the CVS determined that both babies were equally healthy. Now as she examined the ultrasound, she asked whether gender mattered to us. "Well, we have a boy at home, so I guess we'd prefer a girl," I said, realizing with a start that since she gave us a choice, I must be carrying a boy and a girl, and I'd just chosen to terminate a boy.

I had a vision of what our son's brother might have looked like -- the same dimples, slender back, and full lips. I felt a rush of nausea, as if I was eliminating a bit of him, too -- or at least his DNA.

What I couldn't foresee, lying there on the table, was how guilty I'd feel watching my son struggle with having to share his mother with only one sibling: the girl I'd give birth to seven months later. Nor could I anticipate the number of times that I'd think to myself -- as I stumbled out of bed to breast-feed in the middle of the night, or yelled "No!" to my son as he threw a ball too close to the baby, or harangued my husband with the tally of how many diapers each of us had changed - thank God we didn't have twins. We'd made the right decision, for us.

The doctor spoke quietly to the ultrasound technician, instructing her to shift the wand this way and that. "I'm inserting the needle now," she said. "You'll feel a pinch." My husband moved to the head of the bed, just as he had during our son's birth. I stared up at him as he closed his eyes and his lips started to move in silent prayer.

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(The Frisky) -- I come from a small-ish town in Oklahoma where we've never met a vegetable we couldn't fry and the only things more super-sized than our portions are the huge church complexes that alternate with fast-food restaurants along our roads.

So it maybe isn't such a big surprise that by the time I graduated from high school, I weighed 260 pounds. My prom dress was a size 24, and my mother had to help me zip it up, a five-minute ordeal during which we grunted and cursed at one another.

My aunt had to custom-make my graduation gown, a huge white tent in which I resembled the Stay-Puft marshmallow man.

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Still, I left for college in New York City feeling relatively confident. After all, I wasn't just fat. I was also stylish, managing to alter and combine pieces in a way where they overcame their origins as shapeless sacks designed by people with the gall to decorate plus-size garments with ice-cream cones and slices of pizza.

And I was hilarious and sexually brash, defense mechanisms mastered by fat women and gay men everywhere.

I wasn't immune -- hurtful things would happen on occasion. Groups of rowdy teenagers sometimes yelled insults at me from car windows. I gave my phone number to a nice guy, only to find out when he called that he had a fetish for overweight women, shamelessly telling me that he likes "something to grab onto." Or someone would approach me out of nowhere on the street and tell me not to worry about how I look; someday -- when I'm ready -- I'll lose the weight.

And of course, I compared myself endlessly to the impossibly thin women in magazines, just like the average-weight women I knew, to whom I also, by the way, compared myself.

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Despite these blows to your self-esteem, for the most part nobody close to you really tells you to your face what they think about your weight. As a result, a fat girl's worldview is missing vital pieces of information. When you don't get invited on your friends' man-catching all-girl outings, or when men who enjoy sleeping with you over and over again fail to want to date you, you can't quite comprehend that all this is really caused by the way you look.

But then, the summer before my junior year of college, something changed. I made a promise to myself to diet just for one summer, and for the first time I saw results. On a low-carb plan, I started melting away, shrinking inwards. I began to grow collarbones and hipbones, sprouting bony, sharp spots all over my body. By the end of the summer, I was 50 pounds lighter, and within a year I was down to 160 pounds on my 5'11" frame, a solid size 10.

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It's been six years now that I've maintained that weight loss, and it is far and away the best thing I've ever done for myself. Not because I'm healthier and will probably live longer, but because I now reap the benefits of a society set up to punish fat people for the unforgivable crime of eating too much.

I hear the fat jokes right out loud now, instead of just a whispering breeze brushing past my ear. Men who used to let the door swing shut in my face now hold it open for me politely and look me up and down as I step past.

My own boyfriend, a man I began dating a few months after reaching my goal weight, sees the picture on my driver's license and admits he probably wouldn't have gone out with me when I looked like that. I appreciate his honesty. It's better than the good-intentioned people who gush upon seeing the new me, "You're so pretty now!" before stammeringly adding, "Not that you weren't, uh, pretty before."

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Finding yourself suddenly thin after a lifetime of being fat is a bit like stepping into that "Saturday Night Live" sketch where Eddie Murphy goes undercover as a white guy and discovers that white people act completely differently when there are no black people around.

With no outward sign of my former body type, I became a renegade spy for Team F.A.T.

Of course, I didn't discover that thin people drink cocktails and dance when fat people get off the bus. But when I lost weight, I was rewarded with membership in a club I never knew existed, where the benefits included better treatment, greater professional success and, above all, a new status as qualified participant in the social world including romantic relationships.

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Of course, I lost weight to reap these benefits. But it doesn't stop me from being angry that I had to lose weight to reap these benefits. Of those who are nice to me now, who would have been rude to me before? Which ones made the cruel jokes? Who can be trusted?

As the years pass, it is easy to forget. I have even, on a few occasions, found myself looking at an overweight person with faint disdain, forgetting those years I struggled with the very same issue. I hope never to gain back the weight I lost. But I have seen another side of people that I cannot forget. And with any luck, I never will.

I hope I always stay fat on the inside.

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Editor's note: Watch CNN's "Fix Our Schools" coverage all this week, starting at 9 a.m ET in the "CNN Newsroom." We're taking a look at unique solutions to the U.S. education crisis.

New York (CNN) -- He's designed everything from upscale hotels and restaurants to the sets for Broadway plays and the Academy Awards ceremony.

So you might think that creating a kids' playground wouldn't appeal to world-renowned architect David Rockwell.

But it did.

Rockwell, a father of two, became frustrated when he took his kids to traditional playgrounds. He found that these play areas lacked creativity.

"Traditional playgrounds are geared toward gross motor skills and linear play ... they are largely made of fixed equipment: seesaws, slides, monkey bars, swings," Rockwell said. "They are fantastic places to build gross motor skills."

So he decided to design a playground that focused on building imagination by letting the kids build the playground themselves.

The first of his Imagination Playgrounds opened in July in lower Manhattan.

"[Imagination Playground] is a totally manipulatable playground in which every part of it allows kids to create their own constantly transformable play escape."

Visiting the playground in lower Manhattan is an adventure. It's not every day, as a CNN reporter, I get to cross over a moat and dodge pipes and water noodles while getting doused with the occasional water splash.

In a world of endless standardized tests and regimented schedules, Rockwell's playground is meant to encourage creative thinking, teamwork and risk taking.

At first, it looks like a regular playground, but look closer, and there are no swings or monkey bars. Instead, there's water, real sand, big blue foam pieces in many different shapes, shovels, wheelbarrows, balls and lots of running space.

Kids have to work together here: two boys are dragging foam pieces from the sand to the water, while another group stacks them.

When I ask why they're doing all this work, they say, "To close the hole in our bridge."

Most of the groups of kids have just met each other in the playground on this very day.

Charlotte Kelman, 10, stopped and pointed to a shapeless stack of blue foam wedges.

"See, that's a boat you can float on," she said. "I was actually kind of helping make it."

She says she just met the kids who helped her build it in the park today.

We spoke with Rockwell in the playground as two kids pushed past us with a wheelbarrow filled with foam blocks, while others built what Rockwell guessed was "a raft city."

Laughing, he described it as "a humbling experience for a control freak architect."

"One hundred percent of the time, the kids do not use the objects in the way I designed them to be used," he said.

Rockwell likes to visit the playground to see what new ideas kids have developed for his foam pieces.

"We're finding that kids are so over-programmed and have so little free time that when they get here, their own little creative potential is unleashed," he said.

It took him more than five years to build Imagination Playground, and he didn't do it alone. He consulted with play experts and conducted focus groups watching kids use prototypes of the foam.

Susan Solomon, one of the play experts who worked with Rockwell on Imagination Playground, would like to see more playgrounds like it.

"It's all about avoiding risk in most playgrounds, so it's been dumbed down and there's less and less kids can do," Solomon explained.

This one is different because "everything can be invented, reinvented, and this is critical for how kids learn. This enables kids to make their own decisions, to see cause and effect by building up, destroying, building again," she said.

But building more playgrounds like this one won't be cheap: Rockwell donated his time and design expertise and helped raise money for the project.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. donated $4.4 million, and the city of New York threw in an additional $3 million to get the underground pipes in working order.

Solomon believes these kinds of play experiences help prepare kids for environments where not everything is controlled.

"Here, nothing is fixed, nothing is predetermined, and they can see consequences, learn to make decisions," Solomon said. "They learn that not everything is already laid out for you in a way in which it's always going to be perfect: It's possible to fail."

Gail Daum brought her daughter to the park for the first time while we were there.

"I love it," she said as she watched her daughter help another little girl carry a large white pipe across the playground. "She just seems to be creating things and interacting with younger and older kids. It's been a great experience so far."

Rockwell is trying to raise a $5 million endowment to sustain the playground, which has some atypical costs, including replacing the foam pieces and paying for two "play assistants" who oversee the kids.

Rockwell is also exporting the idea to other cities. He's made portable versions of the playground, which he calls "Playground in a Box" -- each contains the foam pieces and other loose parts.

Rockwell says they're now in some parks and children's museums around the country. They cost between $7,600 and $11,700.

He doesn't make money off this project. He says he does it because he believes it makes a difference, and he'd like to build more full-scale Imagination Playgrounds in other cities around the country.

Rockwell smiled as we watched two girls try to dam up a waterspout.

"I love working for these constituents," he said. "They are my most interesting clients."