JAY & ANNA REEVE 'WE'RE STILL BEST PALS!'

Ten years after tying the knot, the couple open up about the traumas of parenting twins and why their love just gets stronger each day

Love at first sight is how many new mums would describe the moment they laid eyes on their babies, especially if the birth follows fertility struggles and pregnancy issues. But when Anna Reeve and her radio star husband Jay welcomed twin boys Hunter and Oscar, the influencer struggled with being a mother to the "mini-Jays", who now light up her world.

"Everyone tells you you'll see your babies and fall in love straightaway, but they felt like little strangers," says Anna, who's competing in Three's new reality series The Traitors NZ. "I felt like a monster because I didn't feel a connection and I couldn't tell anyone because it's like, 'How can you not love your kids immediately?' I just had to get to know them."

Anna, 37, has since met many mums who had similar experiences and feels it's important to break societal perceptions that instant bonding is "normal". She insists, "If you're not obsessed from the moment they're born, it doesn't mean you're a heartless beast. You're allowed to struggle. You're allowed to fall in love slowly as you get to know them."

These days, Anna couldn't be more smitten with her nineyear-old boys, but the slowburn love affair with family life is in contrast to her romance with Jay, 40, who had admired her in a New Zealand Woman's Weekly article when she was 16. Although it was a few years before they met, they fell for each other "hard and fast", before tying the knot at an Auckland church.

Celebrating 10 years of marriage with a Waiheke Island getaway last December, the couple agree that starting a family has been the biggest challenge in their 13 years together. Unable to conceive naturally due to Jay's inactive sperm and Anna's endometriosis, they endured two years of IVF.