Whose Sperm Found the Mark? Colton Underwood, Husband Don't Know

Colton Underwood and his husband, Jordan C. Brown, are excited fathers-to-be who know the sex of their unborn child – a boy – but not whose sperm he's the result of. That's the way they want it, according to Just Jared.

As previously reported, Underwood and Brown revealed their status as expecting fathers earlier this month. Underwood detailed the couple's parenting journey to Men's Health, discussing how they used IVF for conception and are using a surrogate, whose privacy the couple are protecting, to carry the pregnancy.

In his comments to Men's Health, Underwood indicated that without resorting to the laboratory techniques to unite his sperm with an egg, fathering a child might have been an uncertain prospect on his part.

Underwood recounted that Brown's sperm count was "50 or 55 million," whereas his own tallied a mere four sperm.

"And three of them are dead," Underwood told Men's Health. "Word for word, what the doctor said, he goes, 'Uh, I can maybe make this one work.' This one?!"

The procedure was successful, and the evidence of a healthy baby was in an ultrasound image that Underwood posted to Instagram, along with the message, "Our little boy is coming this fall."

But while the gender and due date are known to the happy husbands, they left the question of whose sperm fertilized the donated egg as a mystery for themselves – though, Underwood shared on The Most Dramatic Podcast Ever with Chris Harrison, their IVF doctor is fully clued in on their "game plan" for family building.

"We told our doctor to put the healthiest embryo in," Underwood said on the podcast. "And then for the next one, switch the genetics." In other words, he clarified, the plan is for the doctor to "use the other sperm for the other child" when the time comes to add to their family again.

Typically, IVF involves stimulating the release of a number of ova at once and then fertilizing more than one egg at a time. While only a single embryo is implanted in a gestational carrier, unused embryos can be frozen and implanted later on.

Underwood detailed how he and Brown went "half and half" on the ova that were produced for the procedure, Just Jared relayed, such that sperm from each man was used to fertilize an equal number of ova.

Not that the mystery of whose genes their son is carrying is likely to last for too long. "I have a good chance we're gonna be able to tell," Underwood admitted. However, the couple reasoned that letting themselves remain ignorant about whose sperm conceived their unborn son was a way "to protect ourselves," Underwood said on the podcast.

"I didn't want people coming up on the streets being like, 'Whose is it?'" he added. "And we, like, look at each other. Like, it's our kid and our baby."