Representative Sara Jacobs, Democrat of California, spent much of the August congressional recess on a fertility-drug-induced physical and emotional roller coaster.

“It was like puberty, menopause and pregnancy all together,” Ms. Jacobs recounted in an interview last week, sitting on a couch in her office. “I was getting hot flashes; my boobs hurt; I gained a ton of weight; I got pimples.”

They were unpleasant side effects of her decision, at 36, to spend part of her summer break freezing her eggs. That meant taking estrogen pills, giving herself shots, having daily blood work and ultrasound monitoring, and ultimately having 11 eggs retrieved by her doctor — all while exercising restraint in not responding to the mean comments she read about her body online.

Ms. Jacobs said her experience trying to plan for a future pregnancy inspired her to write legislation that would expand military health care coverage of fertility treatments for service members and their dependents. She hopes to attach the measure to the annual defense policy bill the House will take up this week.

And it convinced her that discussing what she has gone through — even if it involves talking about sore breasts and her own menstrual cycle — would help her colleagues in Congress, a vast majority of whom are older and male, produce better women’s health policy.

“This is the third-oldest Congress in history,” she said. “We can’t make good policy if my colleagues don’t understand how these things work.”