Guys, I feel like I'm losing my mind from either listening to crying or the vacuum cleaner for hours every single day. I am very lucky that my LO is awesome about sleeping at night - he goes down by 8:30 and sleeps until about 6:30, occasionally waking up for a feed but not very often.

But he HATES napping. He gets tired after 1-1.5 hours, but fusses and cries and just fights the nap so hard. The only thing that works is putting him in his swing and turning on the vacuum. But when I do that I have to leave the vacuum on for the entire nap - the second I turn the vacuum off, he wakes up! I've tried apps with the vacuum noise and sound machines and such, but none of it has done me any good, it has to be the real thing or it doesn't work. And sometimes even the vacuum/swing trick doesn't work, in which case I usually end up having to let him fuss and cry for a bit before putting him back in. Sometimes that takes several tries, and if he fights the nap for long enough I might get lucky enough to get him to sleep in the swing for hours, even without the vacuum running. But only if he got so over-tired that he was in screaming meltdown mode, which I'd obviously rather avoid.

I think I've gotten him to take a nap in his crib once, and in the swing without the vacuum or screaming 2 or 3 times, but he woke up still tired, pissed, and refusing to go back to sleep about a half hour later. I've put up light-blocking drapes and setup a nap routine to calm him down, neither of which has made a difference.

Any advice?? I'm praying someone has been through something similar and either has a suggestion or can at least reassure me that this will end. I know I need to break him of the vacuum/swing habit, but how?