Stephanie Limb is an essayist from Derbyshire. She has a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Warwick and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Nottingham. She is currently working on a creative-critical PhD entitled ‘The Monstrous Mother’. Her work has appeared in Litro, The Moth, Stand, Structo and other journals. Her book My Coleridge, a collection of essays about Sara Coleridge and motherhood, was published by Broken Sleep Books in October 2020.
The poem’s speaker recounts her baby’s first illness at week three, questioning Adam Smith’s conceptualisation of sympathy and care, and exploring the porous boundary between mother and infant.