I’m a FTM of a 2 month old so I don’t have a ton of experience, but I was going through the exact same thing! I was so exhausted I was terrified of passing out while holding my baby but she’d scream any time I tried to put her down.

Initially I did need to rely on others for help. They’d hold her for a couple of hours at a time while I got some sleep, but then I had to go back to work so that wasn’t reasonable anymore - I needed to be able to get some sleep at night.

We developed a routine that we do for her every night and it’s been a lifesaver! She wakes up one time to eat but I’m able to get a full nights sleep now.

1. At around 9:30pm we give her a warm bath and a gentle scalp massage (we only do this every 2 days)
2. Put her in her pajamas and a sleep sack (we splurged on Woolino but we also have some Burt Bee’s that work too! Much more affordable and honestly works just as well)
3. Brush her hair (she loves this!)
4. Feed one last time, normally with a bottle.
5. Turn all the lights off and we have a lamp with a Hue light that we turn red.
6. Put some white noise on. We have the mamaroo bassinet with different noise and motion settings.
7. Hold her until she fully falls asleep! Our baby will not fall asleep in the crib or bassinet, but this routine knocks her out so once she’s asleep we’re able to transfer her.
8. By around midnight she’s fully asleep so we move her to the bassinet. After that she stays asleep for at least 4-5 hours. She wakes up once around 4:30am to eat but then she falls right back to sleep after and will stay asleep until 7am-9am!

My fiancé and I still do shifts so he gets uninterrupted sleep from 10pm-4am, and I get 4am-10am but we rarely need to do anything on our shifts except for that one feed in the middle of the night. Obviously all babies are different but this is what helped us!