Same here. Some of the things that have helped make our situation easier:

1. Where we live, by law my wife got a year per kid off of work for childcare. I don't know how people do this without a full-time parent.
2. Since I work remotely, if my wife had a rough night, she could sleep during the day without worrying the kid was going to kill themselves because I would be around.
3. Our kids were definitely on the easier side, especially our first. They almost never cried for zero reason (90% of crying was quickly remediated with the "diapers, hungry, sleepy" checklist), they quickly started sleeping well, etc. Some people have complete devil kids, colic, etc.

What we gave up was doing things together as a couple (romantic dinners etc), as we always had to either bring the kids or stay home with them, but we could still do things on our own when we wanted to. We have family nearby, but they deemed themselves "too old" to look over the kids when they were still babies. Now that our kids are in elementary school age they've been able to sleep over once or twice a year when we get to do a parents getaway for our anniversary etc.