I feel your pain. My oldest son (now 4) did not sleep through the night until he was 14mo old. At about 6 months, I put him in the crib for naps, and got him used to those, and then worked on the nighttime.
I swore I'd be better with the second one... haha.
So my second one is almost 10 months old, and he is still sleeping in bed with me. We have the bassinet pulled against the bed, and then I have pillows stacked up so he can't fall out of bed. I know I should be working on the sleeping thing, but when he is bed with me, I get almost 8 hours of sleep, and am not getting up.
Having been through it with my first, I am just not willing to try the night time thing, because I spent over 6 months getting up several times a night even when he was soothing himself to sleep on his own, eating food, and I wasn't nursing during the middle of the night anymore.
So my advice to you would be do what you need to do to survive. Do what is going to get you the most sleep. If the airmatress thing at night isn't working, and the crib thing is working, great.
I have all the books too, and this second one is just a screamer, and the separation anxiety has hit him too. If he isn't dead asleep when I put him in, he screams and screams. I let him yell for a minute or two, then go back in and soothe him, and repeat. If he is really mad, sometimes this takes 20 minutes. Any longer than that, I cuddle him back to sleep. He sleeps from 8-midnight in his crib (approx) and then into bed with us.
He is doing most of his naps in his crib, sometimes I lay down with him. I figure I am getting him used to the crib in the day time, and when he first goes to sleep, and then when I weaning him completely, I will transition to all the crib. I just don't have it in me to get up several times a night for months on end.
Anyway, I feel your pain, you will probably hear from lots of people who's babies just slept though the night, and the books all make you feel like all babies can if you just do the right things. I did with my first son, and still it wasn't until he was older that he slept. I think some of them just have timers. So do what works, and throw the shoulds out the window. If you keep working on the crib, eventually it will happen. Just not as fast or easy as the books make it sound.