CountBapula, I could usually tell if my DS was waking through habit or regression things by the other sleep things that were going on. In a regression DS would only feed to sleep (not be rocked to sleep) and couldn't sleep in a pushchair. Once the regression was over, I could rock him for naps and the pushchair worked again.
DS also predictably wakes for 1.5 hours most nights during a sleep regression (except for the most recent 13 month one :)) That always goes away on its own (as long as naps are okay), so that's always been a signal for me that the regression is over.
The developmental spurt which causes the regression usually happens at around 19 weeks (from the LO's due date). So if you get to that point, it's worth a try with some gentle sleep encouragement.
I think there's so little awareness of sleep regressions and develompental spurts because it's really only developmental psychologists who know / understand about it. IME most HCPs don't really understand that much developmental psychology. Most HVs have a general nursing background, and spend most of their time on child protection / safeguarding issues so don't have time to research other fields. GPs often don't really know that much about babycare. I don't think midwives are trained to understand the ins & outs of life with older babies.
The Wonder Weeks (the first book to explain all the developmental spurts) was only written in 1992 (in Dutch - translations were later), and further research was only done in the 1990s, so it's a relatively new field. I don't think it's had time to enter the mainstream in the baby care. In the past, people would have wrongly put it down to insufficient milk / needing weaning etc.
IME, catnapping and overtiredness is often part of the problem. Babies who don't get enough daytime sleep will need more naps, so tend to go to bed later, or treat bedtime as if it's a nap. Insufficient naps mean that cortisol (stress hormone) levels are high, and the body produces adrenaline to counteract the cortisone - which has the effect of disturbing sleep further.
I would do anything and everything possible to get as good naps as you can - moving pram, moving sling, car, whatever. Don't worry about bad habits or putting him down in a cot.
If your DS is only napping for 30 mins at a time, it could be because he's overtired from being awake for too long between sleeps. Around 1.5 hours is a good rule of thumb at that age, although it tends to lengthen as the day goes on, so it might be an hour between waking & first nap, and 2 hours between last nap and bedtime. He'll need 3 naps a day, or 4 if they're only short. The earlier you can have bedtime, the better.
Short naps can be caused by developmental stuff too, so if none of the above helps, it may be a case of waiting it out till the developmental spurt is over. This was the case for DS at one point. More again from Moxie [http://www.askmoxie.org/2007/03/qa_babies_takin.html here]] (the comments are worth reading IMO).
Other coping strategies might be to go to bed when DS does, eat lots of takeaways / ready meals, use cleansing wipes for a quick wash instead of a shower, get your DH to make sandwiches for you to eat the next day. We found it better with DH sleeping in the spare room because then there was only one grumpy & sleep deprived person in the house, and he had more energy to keep us afloat in terms of food, washing etc.
I sympathise though - DS was a 40 minute napper for months and months and it was immensely frustrating. We had a terrible time with naps when he was a bit younger, and I spent so much time out with the pram that I would regularly not manage to get any lunch till about 4pm (having missed breakfast completely). But it was worth it to get some benefit at night.
If you're desperate, you could try some sort of gentle sleep training. It's not necessarily doomed to failure in a regression, just less likely to be successful, partly because babies' brains are too busy to learn a new skill, partly because even babies who can self-settle wake lots during a regression. If overtiredness is the problem, self-settling won't help much either.
I personally wouldn't use PUPD at bedtime because my DS is a baby who increases tension by crying (if you're interested, there's more from AskMoxie on tension increasers vs tension decreasers). But I did have success in helping him stay asleep by using it when he woke (after feeding to sleep at bedtime). There's an explanation of what I did here (DS was 7 months then).
The Baby Whisperer recommends trying shush / pat or the Pantley Pull-Off techniques first and keeping PUPD as a last resort because it involves a lot of crying. IME tension releasers get more wound up by PUPD and find it harder to sleep.
It does get better. At that age I worried lots that DS couldn't self-settle. At 13 months he still can't. I reckon he'd learn it pretty easily with just a little bit of help, but we both enjoy the feeding / rocking too much to want to be bothered. 
He sleeps pretty soundly once he's off, and is a really reliable napper nowadays.
HTH - apologies for another essay!