We'll first carry out a semen analysis to assess whether you have viable sperm to freeze. We'll also screen for any infection diseases, such as HIV or hepatitis C. The results of these screening tests won't stop you from freezing your sperm, but will ensure that any affected sperm samples are stored separately from others to prevent contamination.

Following these tests, you'll need to produce a fresh sample of sperm which will be frozen. In most cases, you'll come into your chosen TFP Fertility clinic where you'll collect your sample in one of our production rooms. If this causes you some anxiety, you also have the option of producing your sample at home - we just ask that it's brought back to the clinic within one hour.

If you’re unable to produce a sperm sample, we can also retrieve it using a procedure called surgical sperm retrieval.

Once we have your sperm sample, this is mixed with a cryoprotectant to protect the sperm from damage during freezing.

Before freezing, the sperm sample is divided into separate containers so that it can be used in multiple treatments, if required. The samples are then rapidly cooled using a method called vitrification and safely stored in tanks of liquid nitrogen.