Although some women stop working when their children are born, this phase doesn't last too long anymore. These days, more and more Westchester moms are finding creative ways to start a new business or to do good works for their community without sacrificing the quality time spent with offspring and spouse.

An unofficial guru of this scene, a woman who helps a lot of busy mothers keep in touch with one another-- as well as stay sane-- is Gretchen Menzies. Paradoxically, this Bedford Corners parent has a job: she tends a Web site that has made juggling various roles much easier for working Westchester mothers.

"I started EssentialMom.com a little less than a year ago" said the mother of two boys, "because I saw a need for mothers throughout the county to connect, to find fast and easy information to make their lives easier."

The site, Menzies said, can simply be a place for mothers to share ideas, complaints or funny stories, or it can be a resource for child and adult class listings, and information about volunteer opportunities and nonprofit organizations.

One of the busy moms who has used Menzies' Web site is Deborah Zoe Laufer of Mount Kisco, a playwright and mother of two boys.

"I've had several plays produced since 1994," said the former actress and stand-up comic, whose married name is Friedlander. Her best-known work perhaps is "The Last Schwartz," which was included in a best plays collection.

"It's not so much that it's difficult balancing writing and motherhood," Laufer said. "The hard part is when a play goes into production I usually go to rehearsals for the first week, but then I need to spend time with my family. That first week of being away from my boys and husband is very hard. Luckily, my mother comes and helps out. Frankly, I don't think I'd have a career without her."

Laufer said when she was a new mom in the mid-1990s, she would worry that her family wouldn't be able to get along without her when she was writing and involved with a play's production. With the timing of a comedian, she said, "My biggest fear is that now they're getting along without me too well."

Jennifer Schwartz of Bedford has taken an (electronic) page out of Menzies' book and combined marriage, motherhood and her own magazine.

"I was married in 1999," said Schwartz. "Everybody I knew from college got married at the same time, it seemed. It started to dawn on me that there was no publication that really catered to newly married couples. Cosmo gives advice to single women and lots of other magazines cater to women who've been wives for a long time."

In early March, Schwartz launched Newly Magazine, an online publication that discusses such topics as, "What to do with the wedding money you were given" and "How to deal with your new in-laws."

"I have a 2-year-old who keeps me busy, but having a Web site and newsletter that I can do at home allows me to work and be a mom," she said.

Schwartz said she has had talks with several potential investors about launching a magazine on the newsstands. For now, readers-- and they are as close as Westchester and as far flung as Alaska-- can seek her advice at www.newlymagazine.com.

Dawn Meyerski of Yorktown has also found a unique way of combining full-time motherhood and growing job demands. Since 1998, when her first of two sons was small, she has been program director at the Mount Kisco Day Care Center, which has numbered among its attendees her own children.

"We cater to children as young as 3 months and as old as 11 years," she said. "When my kids were younger, they came here full time. Now they're both in school, but they still come by to visit or have lunch."

Meyerski acknowledged that her growing responsibilities as a worker have made it a challenge to be a hands-on mom.

"Some days," she said, "it can get overwhelming, especially when you work with children. I have to make a conscious effort to see my own boys."

For instance, two days a week, she gets out at 3 p.m. to meet her boys at their school. "It's all a balancing act, but on most days, between working and seeing my kids, I have the best of both worlds."

Sometimes, a career change after motherhood can have a tonic effect on a woman's life, both in the family and business arenas.

That would seem to be true for Cristina Magidson of Bedford Village. Her first professional incarnation was as an investigator of "economic crime" in Washington, D.C., Florida and finally New York City. Fairly early on though, she hit a snag.

"I found that things aren't fair for a female PI on Wall Street," Magidson said. "My firm wasn't billing as much for me as for my male counterparts. Men got an office before women. It was very frustrating."

Magidson, who married in 1997, said the treatment and pay for her work was unacceptable. She took some time off, had a daughter in 1999 and a son in 2003. Eventually she found her way into a much more compatible line of work: a job with her family's real estate management company, dealing with rentals for commercial properties.

"I spend about 12 hours a week at the office and about the same number at home on my laptop," she said. "I have just enough time out of the house and enough time to be home to listen to my children tell me about their day and be a mother."

Magidson also volunteers for the Junior League, helping to give grants to nonprofit organizations, and the Northern Westchester Parent-Child Group.

"It's hectic but has worked out really well. I used to do surveillances on Wall Street at 6 in the morning. I could never do that now, not with children and a husband," she said.