About Me

I am the author of numerous books about pregnancy and parenting, including The Mother of All Pregnancy Books, The Mother of All Baby Books, The Mother of All Toddler Books, The Mother of All Parenting Books, The Mother of All Pregnancy Organizers, Sleep Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler: The Ultimate No-Worry Approach for Each Age and Stage and Mealtime Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler: The Ultimate No-Worry Approach for Each Age and Stage; and more. I recently launched Eclectic and Unexpected at Etsy. [ Full Bio ]

Baby Sleep: How Much Sleep Do Babies Need? Answers to Your Top 7 Baby Sleep Questions

There's nothing like being chronically sleep deprived to turn an exhausted parent into a sleep research junkie. You comb the Internet, desperately seeking answers to your biggest baby sleep questions. But sometimes those answers can be surprisingly e...

Babies and Sleep: Which Sleep Training Method is Right for Your Baby?

There are entire bookstore sections devoted to the topic of babies and sleep. So how can you figure out which baby sleep books are most likely to be right for your family, given your parenting style, your baby's age and stage, and your family's uniqu...

Conception Countdown: Preparing for Pregnancy, Baby, and Beyond Before You Start Trying to Conceive

A generation or two ago, pregnancy care started about two months into pregnancy -- around the time of the second missed menstrual period. At that point, the doctor advised the mom-to-be that it would probably be a good idea to start eating properly,...

Be a Happy and Successful Author: A 9-Step Plan

  I've been writing books since 1997. During that time, I've written 28 books. A few have tanked. Some have sold extremely well. And a couple have become bestsellers. I've learned a lot during about the publishing business over the past nine year...

Creative Parents, Creative Kids

Being creative is good for the soul at any age, and it's a great stress-reliever when you're raising kids. So if you're having one of those extra-challenging days with your toddler or preschooler, why not pull out the art supplies and watch the mood...

You'll Spoil That Baby! -- Vintage Baby and Child Care Advice

There's never been a shortage of advice for new moms -- particularly really bad advice. In this lens, I pay tribute to some of the most crazy-making baby-care advice moms have received over the years.

Baby Sleep: Why Won't My Baby Sleep? Help Your Baby Sleep So You Can Get More Sleep, Too

It can be difficult to track down answers to baby sleep questions when you're sleep-deprived and trying to rock a baby in your arms. That's where this lens fits in. You'll find links to baby sleep articles and the best sleep research resources on the...

Newly Pregnant? The 10 Best Things About Being Pregnant

If you've spent most of the past few weeks holed up in the bathroom battling morning sickness, you may have lost sight of all the perks that go along with being pregnant. After all, there's nothing like waves of nausea to dampen one's enthusiasm for...

Moms and Sleep: A Sleep Survival Guide for Moms at all Stages of Motherhood

The purpose of this lens is to give you some important information about sleep (or, rather sleep deprivation) -- information that can dramatically improve the quality of your life whether you're pregnant, a new mom, or a mom who hasn't had a decent n...

Pregnancy, Birth, Baby, and Beyond: The Quick Guide

Pregnancy and parenting are my "day job." (I write pregnancy and parenting books for a living.) And I recently launched a blog @ Yahoo! Parenting in Canada. (You can access a number of my pregnancy, parenting, and baby articles on the site,...

Retro Pregnancy Advice: 1960s | 1970s | 1980s

Think pregnant women are on the receiving end of a lot of bad advice today? That's nothing new. Moms-to-be have always been magnets for wacky advice from friends, relatives, doctors, nurses, and well-meaning and not-so-well-meaning strangers. Here's...

Chew on This: Parent-Proven Solutions to Your Most Frustrating Baby, Toddler, Preschooler, and Family Mealtime Challenges

WHETHER it's a toddler who forces you to rethink the whole concept of "leisurely dining," a preschooler who redefines pickiness, or the day-to-day challenge of getting dinner on the table, this lens offers some parent-proven solutions for d...

Cult TV: Dead Like Me

I caught an episode of Dead Like Me by chance -- and was hooked instantly. I mean, what's not to love about a comedy about death? The show points out that life is random and unpredictable and unfair -- and yet you're still expected to abide by a cert...

Making Your Own Baby Food: Yes, It's This Easy

Making your own baby food not only allows you to make great-tasting food from the freshest and most wholesome foods available: it also allows you to create foods of different textures. This is important because learning to handle foods of increasingl...

The Summer Parent: Fun Activities, Classic Games, Meal Ideas, and More

It's summertime and the living is easy -- if you know how to tackle some of the parenting challenges that go along with the season of relaxed routines. Here's a quick guide to sidestepping potential summer snafus so you can focus on enjoying the fu...

Back to School Guide: Parent-Proven Advice for Getting the Kids Back to School Without Totally Stressing Out the Entire Family

Hey, moms and dads, it’s back to school time again -- that crazy time of year when you might as well just camp out in the mall parking lot rather than driving back and forth across town in some unending quest for all the back-to-school essentia...

Ann Douglas, pregnancy and parenting author

WELCOME I'm Ann Douglas -- author, mother of four, Squidoo-er. This lens provides a few basic facts about me as well as some links to my favorite online resources about writing.

Looking for The New Parent Handbook?

It's here. And it's free. I know: it was poor planning on the part of Mother Nature: giving you a complex piece of equipment like a baby without so much as a pamphlet full of operating instructions. So here you are, frantically searching the Internet...