The struggle is real

Falling asleep at night has become my new daily torture. I'm not sure if we're doing something wrong or if it's just a sleep regression. Every night we get home from work, eat dinner then play. If it's bath night we do most of our playing on the tub. Then at 8pm its up to his room for pj's and story time. After that I nurse him once more (he falls asleep eating about half the time) then I put him down for the night. Our issue hits about 15 minutes later when he wakes up screaming. Unless he just pooped, our rule is we aren't allowed to pick him up once he's down. So I'll lean over the crib and talk, shhhh, sing, hold my hand on his chest, rub his back, whatever I can do to calm him without lifting him...until he falls asleep. This mostly results in him screaming at me the majority of the time. I occasionally leave the room to give him a chance to cry to it and and calm himself. But that rarely works. So I end up standing over his crib on and off for 1-3 hours. This is the third night in a row.he was doing this 2 weeks ago when he cut his top 2 teeth, but he went back to being a good sleeper, so now I'm questioning what's wrong this time. 😪😴😪