Help wanted for routines & settling!!

My five week old, breast-fed baby feeds three hourly & sleeps like a trooper. EXCEPT after her awake time. After a crazy night of trying to settle her I am asking for HELP & ADVICE so I can be a great mum to baby & her 2.5yo sister.
I have been following Dorothy Waide's advice on establishing a routine & teaching her to self settle but I am having trouble making it work! 
I put her down awake & when she cries, pick her up & sit quietly til she has been sleeping for about an hour. I then put her back in her own bed. Most of the time she wakes up within 5 minutes & we are back to square one. I often end up feeding her again & sometimes she'll settle then but sometimes she won't. As you can imagine this is deeply frustrating, especially when our toddler is waiting for me to get off the couch & spend some time with her. I also often end up with baby in a front pack in an attempt to achieve SOMETHING in my day. 
So any ideas about maintaining consistency would be appreciated.

Ok just my opinion so feel free to ignore but I think at 5 weeks its far too early to be trying to get set routines and baby to learn to self settle, seems a little crazy to me to sit for an hour with the baby and then move her.

Id be looking at patting and shushing in her bed rather than the couch, cos then she'll learn to self settle in the bed with help at first, babies tend to sleep in cycles of 45 minutes and sometimes need a little more help to settle for another cycle. Googling baby whisperer techniques with give you some idea.

I believe in the 4th trimester and babies need to be with their mummies lots and if feeding to sleep works, great, but I would transfer soon as they fall asleep and maybe keep your hands on baby for a little while til they fully settle. A baby being held for an hour in the warm arms of mum and then transfered to a colder bed would make them wake and cry cos suddenly they arent in mums arms, if you transfer when they have just fallen asleep, they are more aware of the bed and happy to settle.

Of course it doesnt always work and takes some practise and time but surely it has to be better than an hour or more on the couch and would give you more time with your toddler.

I just go with the flow of the baby by reading his signs and hopefully getting them right 80% of the time

Our bub was a month prem, and at 6 weeks our plunket nurse told us we could leave him to cry a little in his bassinet before going in to settle him again - 1 minute per week of age. And just repeating this until he went to sleep. Was hard on us not going in there for 6 minutes!! Until then we had basically been taking shifts in the lazy boy holding him, as he would wake as soon as we put him down. It was exhausting. It worked for us and now at 11 weeks old I put him down tonight and he went straight off after a small 1 minute grizzle.

Might not work for you as all babies are different, but after a few days we got the knack and he started to understand what was going on. And best of all some normality returned to our house.

So progress report.
Now nearly 8 weeks old & little madam is amazing!! It started with me realizing that she was crying as hard in my arms as in the bassinette ie she was just plain tired!
So I started putting her down awake but going in as soon as the grizzling started turning to actual crying. I then start rocking her while standing over her in her bassinette so she knew I was there & then continuing the rocking while I moved into the corner of her sight. Then rocked her into sleep. Repeat until she really sleep!!
It works for day & evening settling. HOORAY!! It did take a little persistence but no more than it was taking to get her to sleep in my arms & she now doesn't have to deal with my picking her up/putting her down as I now have a consistent method I am sticking to.
I do pick her up to reassure her if she is getting worked up but put her down as soon as she has calmed down as she knows her bed is safe and cosy too.