To think I emotionally damaged my daughter

[Cleo2628]

When my DD (now 5) was a baby, me & Dh were not in a good place. We had ups and downs but mostly downs and argued quite a bit. I fell pregnant with her sibling in Dec 2019 and caught covid a few weeks later & had hyperemisis, all while moving house. I hadn’t slept for days and was so so unwell. I was dilerious from lack of sleep and constantly being sick.
in the middle of the night got in a huge row with DH and stormed out the house, I was delusional. I was so mentally unwell and honestly think it was a breakdown.
DD was woken and came with me and DH followed saying I wasn’t thinking straight. We ended up all in the car and I drove to my parents house. I was so upset and of course so was DD. It was horrible. She was saying on the way how our arguing upset her, she was only 3. This pains me to type out.

Since then we’ve gone to therapy and worked on ourselves in other ways and we now have a very healthy relationship and really never argue.

I feel so guilty that my DD had to witness this all, she had an otherwise happy life (spent lots of time with grandparents and 1:1 with me where we had lots of happy times)

I feel terrible, like I’ve damaged her. She still talks about that night and how it scared her. I try to explain that I wasn’t well and it shouldn’t have happened etc
I also feel bad that our relationship was so rocky in her toddler years, although we also had happy times.

im not really sure why I’m posting this, I just feel so guilty.

@Cleo2628

I have HG and I'm currently trying to move also and the other day in the car I just cried, I wanted to take my DC out and I just (despite all 3 antisickness meds and steroids) puked up and needed to go home.
I cried my eyes out and yesterday my DS told me seeing me cry really made him scared and sad. I explained that pregnancy makes women very overtired and we call get teary when we're fed up and sleepy.
Unfortunately we as parents are still human and have times where we aren't well, mentally/physically etc and honestly, long term, seeing your parents show them that you can have the occasional bad day but then we move on and accept sometimes we just need a little cry and it's showing emotion isn't a bad thing?

Please don't beat yourself up x

I would argue against talking to her about it. She won't remember what happened to her at 3, whereas if you bring it up now she will have to deal with it all. I went through something like that with my parents' divorce. I didn't remember it at all but lots of adults would repeatedly bring it up when I was older, until I started to feel traumatised about it.

So is there an answer on whether bringing it up yourself, or only doing it if she mentions it, is the best thing? There is a chance she doesn't remember it at all, and talking about it will only cement it in her mind. On the other hand it may be niggling away at her and it would be really good to talk about it.
But how do you know which?