Can you buy time? This is a question I have seriously considered since entering my mid-thirties as a woman who has had to audacity not to have children yet.

At 36 years old, I am asked more and more if I am planning to freeze my eggs, a procedure which is widely believed to prolong a woman’s fertility.

I am often asked this question by people who don’t even know me that well (quite weird to be asking about my ovaries?) – than I am about my holidays (I recently climbed to the top of the UK’s tallest mountain, by the way), my career (I’m biased but think it’s pretty interesting and has taken me to places I never thought I’d be able to go), my wellbeing (I’m well, thanks), my hopes or dreams (still have loads of these, if you’re interested).

And, reader, I’m completely sick of it.

The question provokes a primordial panic that I’d rather avoid. It’s also making me unpopular because I proceed to “bang on” about the data which shows that there is only a 37.9 per cent chance of having a live birth from a frozen egg (it might be higher if you freeze your eggs in your twenties). Like Liz Truss, my invites to London dinner parties are dwindling. But forgive me, for I’m going to keep talking about the data anyway.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) notes that though the technology may be improving, “when looking at success rates for frozen eggs, numbers tend to be quite low.”

And yet, conversations about egg freezing are everywhere. Egg freezing is advertised to me on Instagram. Newspaper........

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