To decrease your risk of infertility and increase your chances of becoming pregnant, use the following guidelines.

Track ovulation at home

• Estimate when you are ovulating by practicing fertility awareness, including:
  • Tracking your cervical mucus changes.
  • Tracking your basal body temperature on a monthly Fahrenheit temperature chart(What is a PDF document?) or Celsius temperature chart(What is a PDF document?).
  • Tracking your luteinizing hormone (LH) levels with a home ovulation predictor test. Many doctors now recommend home ovulation tests as the best method to track ovulation at home.
• Try this interactive tool to calculate your peak fertility.
• If you know when you will be ovulating, do not have sex during the 5 days before your 6-day "fertile window," which is ovulation day and the 5 days leading up to it. (Not ejaculating for a few days helps build up a man's sperm count.) Then have sex once each day of your fertile window, including ovulation day. If your partner has a low sperm count, have sex every other day, since frequent ejaculation does temporarily lower sperm count.
• If you don't know when you will next be ovulating, have sex two or three times each week.⁷
• If you exercise strenuously most days of the week, reduce your level of activity. Very strenuous exercise can cause women to ovulate less often.

Protect sperm count and quality

High scrotal temperatures decrease sperm count and quality.⁸ The following suggestions are not proven medically but are commonly recommended by health professionals. They should not replace professional medical care for infertility.

• Avoid using lubricants during sex. They may affect the ability of sperm to travel up the woman's reproductive tract.
• Wear loose-fitting underwear (boxer shorts). Tight-fitting underwear holds the testicles close to the body, which may lead to higher scrotal temperatures.
• Avoid hot tub or sauna use.
• Try to control fever when ill. High fever has been observed to have an adverse effect on sperm for 2 to 3 months afterward (sperm take this long to grow from germ cells to mature spermatozoa).
• If you exercise strenuously most days of the week, reduce your level of activity. Very strenuous exercise may be a cause of lower sperm counts in some men.
• Avoid alcohol, smoking, and marijuana and other illegal drugs which may affect fertility.

General measures

Now more than ever, it's smart to get regular exercise, eat a healthy diet, and drink plenty of water, as well as to avoid alcohol, medication use (including nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs [NSAIDs], such as ibuprofen or aspirin), and illegal drugs and to reduce or stop caffeine intake.

Start taking a vitamin-mineral supplement. For women, taking a daily vitamin supplement with 0.4 mg (400 ug) of folic acid before becoming pregnant reduces the chance of having a baby with a birth defect.

For more information, see the Planning for a Healthy Pregnancy section of the Pregnancy topic.