Colton Underwood and his husband, Jordan C. Brown, made sure that their surrogate had skin-to-skin time with their son, Bishop, after he was born.
“We had a birth plan that [Jordan] sweetly printed out so that every single nurse in our birthing center had a copy of,” Underwood, 33, said on the Sunday, August 3, episode of the “Two Parents and Pod” podcast. “[It explained] what we were doing, what our preferences were and how we wanted to do it.”
He added, “One thing that we checked with [our surrogate] is we wanted her to have skin-to-skin with him right away.”
Underwood and Brown, 42, got married in 2023, two years after the former Bachelor star publicly came out as gay. They welcomed their son via gestational carrier in September 2024.
Skin-to-skin contact, which is also referred to as kangaroo care, is the method of holding a newborn baby against an individual’s bare chest. According to the Cleveland Clinic, it can support a premature infant’s physical health and help nurture a bond between parent and baby.
“She was all he knew for the whole pregnancy,” Brown explained of their reasoning for allowing the surrogate that moment. “I mean, we would send voice notes that she would play to her belly, and when we would [visit] her, we would get in there. It’s interesting because, I always say, it’s this really weird mix of miracle and capitalism. It’s a miracle, like, bringing new life into the world but also there’s a ton … of contracts and legal stuff.”
Underwood and Brown did an IVF transfer using a separate egg donor sample.
“When you arrive [at the hospital], you’re handing the hospital a court order from a judge that’s, like, ‘The baby that’s born out of this person between this day and this day belongs to these other people,’” Brown, a political strategist, added during Sunday’s podcast episode. “We would have had the right to be, like, baby comes out and goes to us.”
Instead, Underwood and Brown decided to let Bishop have a brief moment with the surrogate.
“We wanted to do what felt right,” Brown added. “We had our own room that was right next door to hers, and it was really cool and really nice. We got very lucky to have a really beautiful, fast [and] uncomplicated birth.”
Underwood and Brown are now basking in raising their 11-month-old son, previously telling Us Weekly how they planned to reveal Underwood’s reality TV past to Bishop.
“There’s no hiding. I definitely live my life differently in a way of understanding that my son is going to be watching me when he grows up,” Underwood exclusively told Us in November 2024. “I try to make him proud in everything that I do. That’s sort of been my north star with the trajectory of my career right now — when all is said and done, I wanna make entertainment and I wanna make this place and this world a better place and more loving and understanding.”
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