17 Hours of Labor Leads to County’s First Baby of ’93

After enduring 17 hours of labor, Laura Winters of Camarillo gave birth to Ventura County’s first baby of the new year at 12:31 a.m. Friday in Ventura County Medical Center.

With the birth of 8-pound, 12 1/2-ounce Rachel Elaine Corwin, Winters, 24, left behind a tumultuous year that saw her fiance, John Corwin, die in a car accident in Nevada just days after their daughter was conceived.

“John wanted children more than anything in the world,” Winters said Friday from her bed in the hospital’s maternity ward. “He’s probably beaming right now.”

Winters and Corwin had dated for three years and planned to marry in September, but their plans were tested when Corwin lost his carpenter’s job during the prolonged slump in Ventura County construction, Winters said.

In February, the couple moved to the Stillwater Piute-Shoshone Reservation near Fallon, Nev., where Corwin’s sister-in-law lived. Winters soon found work 70 miles away at Kennicott’s Rawhide gold mine, where she organized a maintenance program for the mine’s heavy equipment.

By early April, things were looking up for the young couple. Corwin, 24, landed a job at a plant that manufactures aluminum sheeting.

But two days before he was to begin work April 6, Corwin missed a curve while driving on one of the reservation’s unlighted gravel roads and was killed in the ensuing accident.

“We were all devastated,” Winters’ mother, Arlene Winters, said Friday. “It was heartbreaking.”

A day before his death, Corwin had told a relative he thought that Winters was pregnant, weeks before she made the discovery herself.

After learning that she was pregnant, Winters moved back to Ventura County, but said her grief made the pregnancy more difficult.

“It’s been tough, especially when I see other babies with their fathers,” she said.

Winters’ labor began Thursday morning, but did not end for 17 hours. Some of the doctors teased her, suggesting that she was holding out to be the new year’s first mother.

“She worked hard,” said her sister, Kimberley Winters. “Thirteen other women were admitted after her and had babies before her.”

Afterward, the family expressed relief.

“I’m glad it’s over,” Arlene Winters said. “She’s just beautiful,” she said of the county’s first arrival of the year.