I Was Sure Freezing My Eggs Would Solve Everything

I couldn’t tell you the exact moment I started thinking about whether I was going to be able to have kids, but it occurred sometime between February 2012, when the guy I’d been sort of dating for the past few months broke up with me, and May 2012, when I turned 35, because that is the age after which, as a single woman in New York City, everyone knows that no one will ever love you.

I knew, very, very, very deep down, that this wasn’t actually true — that in fact people found love and even had children after the age of 35, even in New York City — but it felt like this knowledge was a tiny little nugget of rationality that had been wrapped in duct tape and put in a steel box and locked with a code and launched into space, and was therefore inaccessible.

Also, I had — have — never been pregnant, so there was a part of me that was convinced that something was deeply wrong with my ovaries; in 15...