I was made redundant on maternity leave – now I’m grateful

Autumn Pritchard-Barrett, 49, is based in Hertfordshire. For a decade she worked in marketing, advertising and PR for major online poker companies. After she was made redundant in her late 30s while on maternity leave, she realised she wanted to spend more time with her children and adopt more flexible ways of working. She retrained to launch her luxury wedding cake business, Wild Autumn Cake Couture. Here is her story. I’ll never forget the moment I was driving home after delivering my first ever wedding cake to The Ivy in London. I had received amazing feedback and the radio was playing The Who’s “Baba O’Riley”. I turned it up loud and was in absolute ecstasy. Remembering all the late nights I had stayed up until 3am perfecting my decoration skills in my kitchen, to finally delivering my first ever commission on the most important day of someone’s life, I suddenly thought to myself: “I can bloody do this!” Shorts Growing up, I spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s house as my mum was a secretary and working every day. She used to collect weekly Cordon Bleu cookery pamphlets. “Wow, what is choux pastry, crêpes Suzette, poached pears?” I remember thinking as I flicked through. They felt so exotic, when the reality was we were having fried spam and chips for dinner. I always thought it would be a dream to study some sort of baking or food in Paris, but instead I did archaeology at university, and ended up working as a PA for the CEO at an online poker company called PartyGaming. It was the early noughties, around the time of the internet boom, and they had set up a new London office in Farringdon, and they had money to burn. I was 28 and my salary was £30,000 which was huge for the time. I used to buy all my toiletries in Liberty. Everyone on the team was the same age and we went to the pub all the time. It’s one of those jobs that really defines you – it was where I met my husband and best friends. From there, I fell into a job in marketing, advertising and PR and eventually became the PR manager for the European Poker Tour. My work was exciting and fun, but it never really drove me. And once my husband and I had a baby, I frankly had different opinions on the world of casinos and gaming. After I got pregnant with my second child at 39, I was made redundant on maternity leave. I was paid a brilliant redundancy packet and the timing felt good. At the time they were looking to move the PR team over to the Isle of Man and I didn’t want to relocate my family. I was also in mum mode and the travel had become exhausting. I took a few years off, had another baby, then was a stay-at-home mum for a period, but when my youngest was ready to start school, my husband and I agreed it was now time for me to start earning again. I had been the main breadwinner on about £55,000, but after I left, we had been making it work on my husband’s sole salary as a copywriter. It had been a squeeze. I was very adamant that I didn’t want to go back into the office. The thought of commuting to either London or Cambridge every day filled me with dread. At the same time, finding childcare that would work for all three children was going to rinse us dry. I didn’t want my children to be those kids who only saw their parents at half past seven in the evening before they’re put to bed. You only get 18 summer holidays with your kids and I wanted to spend it with them. In the summer of 2023, after being inspired by a woman on Instagram, I started baking sourdough and selling it from an honesty box outside my house. For six months, I was busy – I felt more creative than ever and even supplied bread to the local pub. It was a lovely little venture, but I quickly realised that selling £3.50 loaves of bread wasn’t going to pay the bills. I needed to scale up. In March 2024, I saw an Instagram ad for an online course. It taught you how to sculpt flowers in white chocolate for wedding cakes. They looked amazing, so I bought the course, which was £395. I would sit down every night after the children went to bed and practice from about 10pm until 3am in the morning. What kept me going was knowing that every day that I practised, I would be better than people who gave up yesterday. Eventually I knew there was only so far I could get with an online course, so I made the trip to Paris to study in person. The course cost £2,000. I thought that by ultra-niching, by default I would become one in a small pool of experts – and I did. Now I’m one of maybe five people in the UK that do this particular type of cake decorating. I decided I was going to throw myself headfirst into the business. I sold my professional bread ovens, and used the money to invest in branding, a website and a business coach – Kate Tynan of The Cake Business Club – signing up for six months, which cost me £2,000. Among many things, she helped me mind-map my 16 different cake flavours – which include fizzy peach and Prosecco, dark chocolate and tahini, Neapolitan ice cream, and Persian love cake – and my business was born. I felt empowered and my husband and children were really supportive. My first commission was a woman in my village who was getting married at The Ivy in London. I was incredibly nervous. I baked, built, and decorated an entire cake in preparation before delivering the actual one – with my kids and husband as my guinea pigs. I even bought an expensive “cake safe” and shipped it over from the US to protect my cake in transit. I drove it into London myself, and on seeing it, the head chef told me I needed to double my price (I sold it for £850). It instantly gave me so much confidence. There have been a lot of sacrifices along the way. This is my first year of trading, and I will make a loss of at least £10,000 as I build solid foundations. We’re lucky we have savings. There are some things that are unavoidable such as the expensive beginning of the school term, but we have scaled back a lot of our spending and try to stay within a budget every month. Now when we go on holiday, we don’t go all out. I also had to give up my social life to concentrate on my business so I don’t see friends as much as I would like to, and at some point my children will be leaving, and I will wish that I spent more time with them. At the moment I’m just trying to get my name out there. My dream is to make a cake for a wedding at Claridge’s and The Ritz. The aim is not to just have a “little baking company” but a proper luxury business. Since then, I’ve done three more weddings this year with another two coming up. Baking, building and decorating a full floral cascade cake takes five days and I work between 9am and 3pm when the children are at school, so progress is slow. There’s been a huge amount of uncertainty, learning, and tears. The reality is that making that transition in midlife, with three children and all the financial responsibilities that come with that, is quite different from simply deciding to follow your dream when you have plenty of money behind you. My children are watching everything that my husband and I do. I know I am a role model for them in both good and bad ways. I’ve got two boys and a girl, and especially for my daughter, seeing me create something of value and beauty while also managing a family, it’s massively inspirational.