Feeling like the pressures of parenthood are mounting?

Tired of struggling to stay awake with a new infant night after night?

Need a break?

Well, if you are in Australia ... or ready to pack up for a trip down under ... you, too, can join other mothers at the new $8 million, five-star "mother's retreat" in the Lavender Bay area of Sydney.

For a mere $1300 (US $1,111) per night, you can relax in one of the twelve beautifully appointed rooms, look out over a view of Harbour Bridge, enjoy meals prepared by a gourmet chef, all while getting tips on how to deal with baby.

Although designed for those having just given birth, I see no reason adoptive moms couldn't benefit from this sort of pampering, too.

The retreat is ostensibly "designed as a halfway house between hospital and home, and would appeal to older mothers with limited family support" ... I'm reading: and loaded.

Australians do get a $4,000 "baby bonus", however, so that might be funding a few nights of luxury.

An article in what I have to consider my hometown paper has a story about older moms and affluence, and how they may tend to go together. It sounds like geezer adoptive parents like me would hardly stand out at all in my old stomping grounds any longer.

And although this story focuses on Demi Moore, pregnant at 44, it does concede that, "... news is not all bad for older mothers, though. Research has shown that they tend to spend more time with their children, and they are better able to cope emotionally and financially with having a baby."

Gee. Thanks. Adoption is mentioned as well, in between bits about fertility treatments and comparisons to how young moms do it.

For those who may be leaving the work force to raise kids, this report on retirement plans gives a lot of advice from the UK perspective, but that may also provide leads to American moms ... or at least give food for thought.

And just because it's here, this story about a cat in Rhode Island has me looking askance at all three of mine and wondering what they might know.

Oscar the Cat lives in a nursing home in Providence, and apparently can tell when a person is within hours of dying.

Raised at the nursing home since he was a kitten, Oscar often checks in on residents, but when he curls up for a visit, physicians and nursing home staff know it's time to call the family.

"I don't think this is a psychic cat," said Teno. "I think there's probably a biochemical explanation," she said in a telephone interview.

Oscar has been at the bedside of twenty-five patients as they passed on.

I think I'd like that ... but I'd avoid the cat like the plague up until then.