Giving, giving, giving - that's what mothering is all about. We nurture, soothe, stroke, caress and calm as if we had bottomless wells of life-giving energy. But the well runs dry once in a while: we find ourselves screaming at the children when we really shouldn't and struggling to get out of bed in the morning, because another day of the hard grind seems too much.

Yet we get out of bed, get them out of bed, make the Ready Brek, do the school-run, get our own work done, do another school-run, sit patiently over the homework, cook for them, feed them, wash their clothes, supervise violin practice, read stories, get them to bed. Then we struggle against fatigue to switch on the lap-top and check the e-mails.

Problem is, when you get so stressed that you feel like screaming, you stop really relating to your children. You undo all your good nurturing.

I was reminded of this recently when I went to the High School in Rathgar to see my beautiful niece in a production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. If you don't know the play, it is about how quickly life passes us by. In the daily routine of making breakfast, cooking and cleaning, we may feel seething resentment while never looking anyone in the eye. Then, when our children are gone - or we're gone - we realise how much we loved caring for them.

I'm getting a bit morose. What I'm trying to say is, there's no point giving everything you've got if you can't refresh the well by tapping new underground streams. The only way you can do that is by nurturing yourself - or letting others nurture you.

So I headed off with a friend (also a mother) for a weekend of indulgence. It started on the Dublin-Westport train: for me, it could have been the Orient Express. For four hours, I read novels, the New Yorker and Vanity Fair without interruption. So what if the dining car coffee was undrinkable: who needs cappuccino when you've got four hours of continuous inner life, interspersed by your friend's witty commentary on the bad eye-lifts depicted in Hello magazine?

From Westport by car to the Spa and Lodge at Delphi, nestling in the Mweelrea mountains and close to Killary Harbour in south-west Mayo. My reaction to the unbelievable beauty was: "Oh my God! I can have a life for the next 48 hours." This was partly because I realised my mobile phone wouldn't work.

I forgot the mobile as a team of gentle, caring therapists wrapped me in marine algae and put me in a balneotherapy bath - it coordinates water-jets with colour therapy. They anointed me with aromatherapy oils, Indian head-massaged me, gave me reflexology and generally made me feel like Cleopatra. I turned to jelly.

I am very particular about spas. I will not go anywhere that mentions the words "cellulite", "ageing" or "weight loss".

I'm into inner peace, meditation, getting in touch with nature and being pampered.

I love to detox, if I can enjoy a bottle of wine over a fabulous dinner with no lettuce leaves in sight and plenty of chocolate mousse for dessert. Seaweed wraps and facials are delightful, but the most important part of detoxing is the emotional release of the giggle and hysterical laughter with girlfriends at the end of a spa day, when everything spills out.

The spa was filled with self-indulgent mothers from Galway, Dublin and Cheltenham, taking a break from real life and pretending to be queens. We wandered around in white cotton bathrobes, so relaxed and glassy eyed we looked like Stepford Wives. The meditation class leader said that everyone was so chilled that there was no point meditating.

When, at 4 p.m. on Saturday, I rang home to find out if everything was okay, I ended the conversation as soon as was polite and stumbled back into the jacuzzi, muttering to myself about hearing nothing but screaming, PlayStation and a barking dog.

Five women in white robes looked up at me from their day-beds and chorused: "Called home, did you? That was stupid." They were right. Never mind what Andy Warhol said about fame, we all need our 15 minutes of indulgence. As one of the therapists said as she stroked my limbs with aromatic oils: "All Mommies need pampering." This set me thinking that we should all be like Indian women of the past, learning the arts of pampering and practising them on our children, our partners and each other. What did any of us ever get from complaining to each other on a mobile phone except a headache? Two days in the wilds of south-west Mayo had me so de-stressed that the thought of returning to real life gave me palpitations. Then, as I picked a sprig of berry-laden holly from the side of the mountain as a gift to the children, I thought: wouldn't it be great to live here all the time?

Bringing up children in a natural, wholesome environment is one of the reasons that the men behind Delphi live there. One of the partners, Frank Noone (a former Mayo footballer who built the spectacular lodge with his own hands) and manager Mick O'Driscoll made decisions to live organic, family friendly, nature-friendly lives in the Delphi area 20 years ago. Frank's wife is a full-time mother.

Mick, a Dubliner seduced 20 years ago by the wilds of Mayo, travels to work every day in a kayak across Killary Harbour where he's on first-name terms with the dolphins, seals, and otters. He meditates daily, drank wheatgrass juice 20 years before anyone else, and is so chilled that his mere presence seems to have a calming effect on the stressed city-folk who arrive on his doorstep looking for tranquility.

This set me thinking: Dublin? Traffic? Two-career families? Are we crazy?

But here I am, back home and writing this column after the kids are asleep, as the e-mails flow in and the cars sweep up and down the road.