The tragic tale of Jackie Kennedy's firstborn daughter

President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy raised two children together during their time in the White House, but just a few years earlier they had suffered the tragic loss of their first daughter.

Jackie had already suffered one miscarriage in 1955 when she fell pregnant for the second time, and she knew carrying the child to term would be no easy task.

Due in September of 1956, Jackie made it past the three-month mark – the stage where she miscarried the first time – through her second trimester and into the third before things went wrong.

While JFK was away with friends cruising the Mediterranean on a yacht, Jackie's pregnancy came to an abrupt and heartbreaking end.

She woke on the morning of 23 August 1956 bleeding heavily. Not long after, Jackie delivered their first child, a daughter Jackie named Arabella. She was stillborn.

According to reports, Jackie never officially named her first daughter, nor does the name "Arabella" appear on any formal documents or in any written records.

However, those closest to Jackie have claimed time and again that the former First Lady referred to her stillborn child by that name as she mourned in the months following the traumatic delivery.

JFK soon returned from his trip abroad to be with Jackie, though it wasn't his first reaction, according to the Huffington Post.

The outlet suggests that he had to be encouraged to return to his grieving wife by friends.

"You better haul your ass back to your wife if you ever want to run for president," friend George Smathers reportedly told him. And so JFK did.

In the years that followed, Jackie and JFK would welcome two healthy children, a daughter named Caroline in 1957 and a son named John Jr. in 1960.

The couple welcomed a third child in 1963, but baby Patrick Kennedy was born five-and-a-half-weeks premature and died after just 39 hours.

Though only two of her children survived past infancy, Jackie reportedly viewed all of her pregnancies with the same love and devotion.

When editing a book written by her friend, historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jackie confirmed that she and JFK had "five children in ten years".