[Snorlack]

Since I'm a skeptical nerd I started getting more and more cynical about all the anecdotal stories from friends, books, and on the web. Then I found Emily Oster's books.

Wikipedia snippets: "Emily Oster is an American economist and bestselling author. After receiving a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard in 2002 and 2006 respectively, Oster taught at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She later moved to Brown University, where she holds the rank of Professor of Economics. Her research interests span from development economics and health economics to research design and experimental methodology.... She is the author of two books, Expecting Better and Cribsheet, which discuss a data-driven approach to decision-making in pregnancy and parenting."

In short they are meta-research papers on pregnancy and parenting in the form of fun readable books.