5 month old early evening wakes

My baby is 5 months old and we’ve essentially been cosleeping since birth as he would never sleep longer than 30 mins in his bassinet. That’s been working us for until recently when the early evenings are becoming really challenging - baby needs to sleep around 7-7:30pm (he falls asleep feeding) but neither my husband nor I are usually ready for bed by then given work, dinner etc. We spent a month trying to put baby in bassinet for first part of the night but never got more than 30 mins (sometimes an hour if lucky!) in the bassinet so decided it wasn’t worth all the stressful transfers. However, since returning to putting baby on husbands chest for essentially a contact nap until first wake, baby now wakes pretty much every 30 mins until 11ish when he finally settles into roughly 2 hourly wake ups until 5:30-7am. He is easy(ish) to get down each wake by rocking or feeding which indicates to me that he does want to be asleep. Until 3.5 months old he would do a good 3 hour stretch first off. I’m exhausted and have no idea what to do as it’s so hard to get ready for bed / eat etc in our current set up, or go to bed early to actually get some rest.

Is 7-7:30pm too early a bedtime for our baby? Is it too late??Should I treat this as a catnap and get him up after first wake and aim for a later bedtime after that? Why is baby waking every 30 mins and often appearing so distressed? Has anyone had success getting baby in crib for first part of night and then bringing into bed? Any advice welcome!