I had Maggie in a bassinet that I had placed in the cot on the highest setting. It would have definitely been too hard to have handled her at the lower setting.

At least wear your supports at night, I found that helped a lot as I would sometimes sleep on my hands in a funny position and make it worse! Also minimising computer use helped as well.

I have seen bath supports for young babies, they are angled to lay the baby on. As for bathing, every 2nd day is fine, better for their skin, see this thread for a discussion on bathing. Just make sure you do a good clean with baby wipes (commercial or home made) at every nappy change. Little babies sometimes do not like to be bathed to often.