Brett Russo - The Underwear in My Shoe: My Journey Through IVF, Unfiltered

I didnt start off obsessed with the idea of having a baby. Quite the opposite. I used to have disdain for girls obsessed with marriage and offspring. You know the girl. The one who had a wedding Pinterest page before she even had a boyfriend. I grew up with two brothers, and for years I would watch females throwing themselves at one of them, regardless of whether my brothers showed any interest or not. Seeing these women willing to give up everything real about themselves to be the girl they thought my brothers wanted them to be always bothered me. I saw it time and time again. They would linger around for a last - minute invite to a wedding. Accepting inconsistent texts and Tuesday night plans because they didnt want to be that girl who asked where they stood. That girl? You mean the girl who stands up for herself?

From an early age, I knew that would never be me. As I grew up, these same girls seemed to be the ones crying to strangers in bathrooms across the West Village about not being engaged yet to their longtime boyfriends. The same girls who lived in Manhattan only to fake a career long enough to find a rich husband to have blonde babies with. You know them. You see them on Facebook in portraits in fields, next to barns, humblebragging their way through your news feed.

I spent a good part of my single life determined not to become that girl. This was my city, too. The city where powerful women have careers and wear killer heels with red soles they bought themselves. Women who write important emails while walking down the sidewalk. So what if we are approaching thirtythen thirty - five then forty. We are women of the new age. We have gay friends and get bonuses at work and wont become victim to societys views of where we should be at this stage in our lives. We are the girls who dont settle for a man we dont love just to say we have a husband, and we sure as hell dont get down when we cant get pregnant right away. We have much more going on in our lives than to be obsessed with that. Right?

I should make a confession of my own. I moved to lower Manhattan seven years ago. I have spent every day since trying to be the New Yorker I always dreamed of being. I grew up in New Jersey, and my family would always go into the city to see Broadway shows and the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree during the holidays. I would get so excited knowing we were going in. People who lived in Manhattan seemed like they were part of some cool world where people wore big sunglasses painted in brands that no one had ever heard of before. That same obsession led me to say for years that I lived in Manhattan when in actuality I lived in New Jersey. I could usually get away with it until I was caught off guard by a closet - case city girl turned suburbanite. Shed ask me what street I lived on, and as I stumbled for a response, wed both suddenly know my jig was up.

By the time I had started dating Jack, though, I was finally living in Manhattan in an apartment overlooking Tribeca. It was small and way too expensive, but it was mine and that was all that mattered. I was officially a New Yorker. I had a job I loved. I had a collection of high heels to die for, and I walked around with this badass swagger you could see for blocks. I married Jack a year later after a long - distance love affair from across the globe. Its been a true fairy taleuntil now.

My name is Brett Russo. Im a girl with a boys name. A girl with the same story as you.