Sleep disagreement

[millesteve]

Hi everybody,
Sorry about the length of this post, but I have a lot on my mind about this. Thanks in advance. I am the dad of an 8 month old baby girl. She is developing beautifully, is already pulling herself to stand, feeds herself a lot of her meals, and has a wonderful, sunny disposition while awake. The one big issue that my wife and I have been struggling with for the last several months has been her sleep. I want the baby to fall asleep on her own in her crib and learn to soothe herself back to sleep each time she awakens. I feel that it is extremely important that we are consistent in our approach and try to do the same thing each time she awakens. My wife would be more comfortable co-sleeping and is more uneasy about the baby crying herself to sleep alone.
We eventually settled on going to a sleep expert at the local children's hospital, who advocates something more akin to my approach. Unfortunately, in following their approach we ended up doing the "cry-it-out" method but the baby cried so much (>2 hours in a row) that my wife had to stop it about 5 days in. We have been trying to just let her cry at the beginning of the night and then go to her in the middle of the night. Now the baby is waking up 6-10 times per night and is very difficult to soothe back to sleep with tons of crying that can go for > 1 hour. We are getting crushed, both in terms of sleep, and in terms of our disagreement about what to do next.
My wife wants to do our own thing, meaning just do whatever feels right for her each night, including some co-sleeping, some crying, some other creative methods like littering her crib with bottles of water that she can drink to soothe herself. I am ready to do cry it out again, but this time have my wife sleep in our bedroom with a white noise machine on and have me sleep by the baby's room to make sure that she is OK and give her 1 or 2 feeds while asleep. A complicating issue is that I have to be out of town about one night a week, so my wife will have to do it.
This sleep thing is becoming an obsession for both of us and is creating lots of distress for us and the baby. Should I just give up and let my wife do whatever she wants? I worry that we are just confusing the baby more and more and will make her crying and her distress worse by doing anything except letting her cry it out. I don't want her in our bed. Anybody been through this? Thanks again.

- Steve the Confused