Colton Underwood was almost unable to have kids, but his son will be born soon

Former Bachelor star and professional football player Colton Underwood is expecting the birth of his first son in October. He and his political strategist husband Jordan C. Brown are sharing some details about their surrogacy journey and the preparations they’re making for the newborn’s nursery, including the challenges Underwood faced when he learned that he had a low sperm count.

“All of these little moments just mean so much to us because we don’t physically get to be along with the entire ride. We’re not with our surrogate every single day,” Underwood recently told People magazine, which ran photos of Underwood in his son’s nursery.

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Underwood said he and his husband worked with designer Chad Wood to create a “traditional nursery” that feels like a sanctuary for the new family. The nursery has a fabric canopy hanging over a wooden crib that the husbands built and also a day bed next to a window where they can sit, hold, feed, and bond with their child.

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The infant will also have a very special blanket: the same one that Underwood had as a child.

“I still have my same blanket that I went home from the hospital in, so I’ve kept it with me this entire time,” says Underwood of preparing for this moment. “Wrapping him in that and just loving on him and showing him the world, and being able to watch Jordan hold and feed him and having late nights and early mornings and all of the things that come with being a dad is what I’m looking forward to.”

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Underwood also shared that when he and his husband decided to have children, they faced some “fertility issues and struggles” that they wanted to talk openly about in an effort to normalize the experience.

Underwood initially discovered that he had a low sperm count that could make it difficult for him to fertilize an embryo. He was eventually able to raise his sperm count after a six-month process that involved getting off testosterone, working out less, not using his hot tub, and taking morning walks, USA Today reported.

He and his husband both fertilized several frozen embryos so that neither of them would know which one of their sperm was used to conceive their child. Their “fertility team” included nine people, and the entire process cost the couple around $350,000.

“They’re ours is the approach we’re taking. We’re staying away from biological, this one’s mine, this one’s yours, we’re not doing that,” Underwood said.

They have kept the identity of their gestational surrogate a secret. But they found an egg donor by using a concierge service that involved looking through donor profiles, including pictures and information about prospective donors’ history, past sexual health issues, and biographical information. The couple said they wanted a donor who was spontaneous and adventurous and had traveled abroad.

Underwood noted that LGBTQ+ couples face discrimination and increased stakes because of the additional medical steps that they must take to have children. Many same-sex couples use surrogates and in vitro fertilization (IVF) to conceive children, but his own family had many questions about the process, including questions like: Who’s the mom and who’s the dad in the relationship? Who’s the boy and who’s the girl? How does the mom work? Are the egg donor and surrogate the same?

He hasn’t always known how to respond to such inquiries, but he said all he really wants is to have a healthy child.

“For me, having the experiences that I have from both the church and football, I’ve dealt with a lot of the toxic masculinity,” he says. “I know that phrase gets overused quite a bit, but there’s very much still stigma and things that go on in the sports culture, specifically. Just giving our child the freedom to express themselves and to be pure is what I want.”

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