Australian influencer Veruca Salt welcomes twins two years after tragedy

Australian influencer Veruca Salt has welcomed twins two years after the sudden death of her firstborn son, Cash.

The Gold Coast-based content creator, whose real name is Kimberley Hartley, announced her twins safe arrival on Instagram on Monday night.

She revealed their names are Storm and Zion and shared the first photos of the twins with her 608,000 followers.

The first snap showed Hartley, 27, cradling the newborns against her chest with a hand resting protectively on one child’s head.

The caption revealed Storm and Zion were born on Saturday, September 26, but she chose to keep their arrival private for two days before sharing the news publicly.

Other images appeared to show the new mum moments after giving birth, and the twins undergoing medical treatment immediately after birth.

Read more

'I don't know who the father is:' Influencer's confession

“I’m so in love with them,” Hartley captioned one snap of the twins sleeping side by side in matching purple blankets.

The influencer announced she was expecting back in March and claimed her estranged husband, whom she married in Las Vegas after knowing him for just two weeks, was not the father.

They split in December 2025 after just two months of marriage and Hartley was only six weeks pregnant in March.

She told fans she had been trying to get pregnant for some time but wasn’t sure it would happen for her.

Hartley also confessed she didn’t know who the father of her twins was in a candid TikTok video posted in April.

She said she had been seeing two men “casually” when she conceived and made both men get prenatal paternity DNA tests.

"As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I did tell both of them ... it's not really been going well," she said.

"In the world of ancestry.com, lying about the paternity of your children is a pretty bad idea. That's not really something I'm down to do."

News of her pregnancy came one year after her son Cash died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in February 2024, at just six weeks old.

When Hartley announced his death social media, she was met with a flood of trolls who attacked her and questioned her abilities as a mother.

Hartley has been open about how deeply Cash’s death and the online abuse that followed has affected her.

“I don’t think it’s fair for people to act like I did anything wrong or to try and fill in the blanks when my baby is dead,” she told Rolling Stone in 2024.

“They get to be hateful and then move on with their life after one scroll. And this is my life 24/7. This is how it will be for me forever.” 

The Red Nose Grief and Loss Support Line is available 24/7 for anyone affected by the loss of a pregnancy, stillbirth or death of a baby or child on 1300 308 307.