Giovanni Leandro Aguilar

Sibley, IA

     Giovanni Leandro Aguilar, infant son of Jose Aguilar and Nicole Rozeboom, went home to be with his Lord on July 14, 2019 at the Sanford Hospital in Sioux Falls, SD, having health complications after his birth.

     A public visitation will be held from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. on Saturday, July 20^th at the Jurrens Funeral Home of Sibley, followed by a private family service.

     I was about 17 weeks pregnant when we went in to have our first ultrasound to find out the gender of our beautiful little baby. We never expected the first set of news. We found out our little one has a cleft lip and palate (no big deal). We were then referred to Sioux Falls to a specialist to get further testing done to make sure there was nothing else that could potentially be wrong. We went in with high hopes that our little boy was just fine!.... wrong... we had really high suspicions that he would be a Trisomy 13 baby. We then were informed that with these babies, there is a really low living rate. We were told that our poor baby boy would only live anywhere from a couple minutes to a couple hours, maybe even a couple weeks.... Our hearts were torn, but we knew we had to be strong not only for our families, but also for ourselves and the tiny little human growing inside of me. We needed to stay strong! We continued through the journey with high hopes and still continue to have hope! At 34 weeks, I woke up and was spotting. I went to my clinic and got checked out, was sent to Sioux Falls due to high blood pressure which eventually went down and I was discharged. They did not see any reasoning for me to stay. I then woke up Saturday morning in pain.... this time I was cramping. So, I went to the ER where I then again, had high blood pressure, cramps, and spotting. I was then air lifted to Sioux Falls to come to find out that I had preeclampsia as well as our little guy had the cord wrapped around his neck twice as well as around his body. I then needed an emergency c-section. (Everything went great!) our little guy came out crying and was not blue at all like they told us he would be due to his double left ventricle outlet heart disorder. He was born on Saturday, June 22, 2019 at 2:35 p.m. and came out weighing 2lbs 10oz and 15.35 inches long. He did so well for his first week of life and we got the news that they found out there was more wrong with his heart than originally seen. We were then asked if we knew where we wanted to go for heart surgery, which we knew he would eventually need, but not this soon. We told them that we heard so much good news about the cardiology team and heart surgeons in Omaha. On Saturday, our baby boy turned a week old, we were then airlifted to Omaha. We had a date schedule for heart surgery which was then cancelled after reviewing Giovanni’s MRI. They found many abnormalities in his brain stating that he has Lobar Holoprosencephaly, a small cerebellum, and more. We were then forced to make the decision of whether we wanted to continue with surgery or bring our baby boy home on hospice. We only had a couple of days to decide, but after a lot of crying and heart ache, we decided that we did not want to put our little warrior through all the pain and unknowns. We brought him back home to Sioux Falls for family and friends to meet him before he went into the arms of Jesus. Our baby boy departed this world on July 14, 2019 at 8pm. 

     Left to cherish his memory are his Mother, Nicole Rozeboom. Father, Jose Aguilar. Grandparents: Ryan and Shondra Rozeboom, Norma and Jose Moreno, Mike and Shannon Anderson. Aunts: Paige Herrmann, Shilo Herrmann, Courtney Anderson, Harley Anderson, Nimsi and Camila Moreno. Uncle: Austin Herrmann. And Extended family such as Great Grandparents and Cousin.