Getting tested: your options

Half of fertility is male, but in most couples the man is tested last, after months of investigations on her side. Get tested early. It's one of the quickest, cheapest, most informative tests in all of fertility medicine - and clinics run it all day, every day, without ceremony.

The routes

• Through a doctor. In many countries a GP or family doctor can order a semen analysis directly, often at little or no cost, especially once you've been trying for a while. This is the best route: the result comes back to someone qualified to interpret it and to refer you onward if needed.
• Private labs and fertility clinics. Faster access, no referral needed in most places, moderate cost. You get a full lab-grade analysis - all the parameters described in How to read a semen analysis.
• Mail-in kits. You collect at home and post the sample; a lab analyses it. Convenience is real, but sperm are time- and temperature-sensitive cargo, and motility results in particular degrade in transit. Reasonable as a first look; a clinic test is the one decisions get made on.
• Home-screen devices. The cheap ones estimate concentration only - they cannot see motility or morphology, which is most of the picture. A "normal" home screen can sit alongside a real problem, and a "low" one can be noise. Fine as a nudge to get properly tested; not a substitute.

What actually happens

You'll be asked for 2-7 days of abstinence beforehand - not superstition, it standardises the sample so results are comparable. At the clinic you produce a sample in a private room (some clinics allow collection at home if you can deliver it within the hour). The lab needs a complete sample; losing part of it skews volume and count.

Results usually come back within days, as a sheet of numbers. Before you read them cold, read How to read a semen analysis - the reference ranges mean something subtler than pass/fail, and one test is never the whole story.

When to go

The standard advice: after a year of trying without success - or six months if your partner is over 35. Go sooner if there's a known reason: past testicular issues, surgery, chemotherapy, steroid use, or you just want the data. "I'd like a semen analysis" is a complete sentence, and no doctor will find it strange.

Log your results in My Fertility and they become a trend instead of a piece of paper in a drawer.