When does it get easier? Or at least feel like you’re not drowning? LO is 6 months and I’ve made no progress

Is there something I should or could be doing to make our lives easier? My baby is 6 months old so we’re well out of the newborn phase. I thought by now we’d have some sense of control over our lives, but I’m just as exhausted as I was in the beginning. I feel like I’ve made no progress. LO slept 8+ hour stretches for about a month when he was 2 months old and I thought we hit the jackpot. Jokes on me because the 4 month regression hit and he’s been waking up every 3 hours (at least) to eat or for his pacifier.

I’m a SAHM and pretty much all of the household chores like cooking and cleaning falls on me. My husband will do literally anything I ask when he gets home from work, but when he’s home I’d rather hand him LO so they can have time together while I catch up on chores and make dinner.

My MIL told me I’m making things too hard for my family because LO is still EBF, and he gets no screen time unless it’s an ‘emergency’ (basically once/week or less for 5 mins). I disagree with her but there are also things that I think I do that I need to lighten up on… but I’m hesitant to bc LO is absolutely thriving, growing, hitting all his milestones and is the happiest baby. These are the things- I cook every meal for my husband and I except maybe once/week we get takeout for dinner and a few times he buys pizza for lunch. It’s a money saving thing but also I don’t like eating takeout bc it’s not as healthy as what I can make. So that entails driving 30 mins each way to the supermarket bc we live in the middle of nowhere. Like even making my own yogurt and baby food for LO. And every item I buy is heavily researched (by me) like his new activity mat and baby gates, to make sure they’re safe and non toxic. I spent hours on it yesterday.

I see my sister with her new baby and she seems to be doing unbelievably well. She supplements with formula so she can sleep for long stretches while other people feed her baby, and has no problem with screen time. They eat takeout often and she lets everyone babysit so they can go out often, meanwhile I’ve left LO only 3 times with a babysitter (grandparents) in 6 months because I feel my LO needs me and I don’t want him to think I abandoned him. My mom says my son is too bonded to me bc when she plays with him or holds him and I’m within eyesight (it’s a 1 bedroom apartment so that’s basically always) he just stares at me. She says it’s not normal so then I feel bad for not taking him out to socialize more often. We’re going to mommy and me class this week for the first time…. I previously avoided it bc germs and I was anxious to go by myself with LO. I also never drink alcohol bc I’m EBF but I know it’s ok to have a glass of wine occasionally. But my husband doesn’t drink so I feel like an alcoholic drinking alone, and I have mom guilt about it, so I just don’t. We have a few beers and wine leftover from a dinner party and I really think it’d relax me to have some. I guess the last thing is that we have never taken him to a restaurant, because we think it would be stressful and because of the germs. We’ve taken him to the supermarket three times and pretty much nowhere else except grandparents houses.

I think we should hire a cleaning person to come do the deep cleaning that I can’t get to, and get takeout more often. And we’re going to have my in laws babysit next weekend so we can get out for a few hours. Maybe that would help. Idk if I’m asking for permission to relax my ‘rules’ or just complain that this is really hard. But thank you for reading if you made it to the end.