Sleep Training: Day 1

Ok, so I decided that today would be our first day of sleep training. Overall Garrett sleeps pretty well at night. He usually goes to bed around 7:30pm and sleeps until 7 or 8am. He usually wakes up once around 5 for a feeding and goes right back to sleep. Although, I would prefer not to get up at all at night, I won't complain. Napping, on the other hand, is a completely different story. Garrett is a horrible napper! The only way that we have been able to get him to nap is to let him fall asleep on us and then place him - CAREFULLY - in his swing. Sometimes he will fall asleep on his own in his swing, but usually not without a long bout of crying. Even in his swing, he usually will only nap for short periods of time (usually 30 minutes or so). Well, he is just about at the weight limit for his swing, so we needed to come up with a new solution. I have tried to get him to nap in his crib before but that has never worked and he simply screamed uncontrollably the entire time. I found a sleep book that I like call "The Sleep Easy Solution" and thought that we would give it a try. (***Grandmothers beware, this approach does involve quite a bit of crying on Garrett's part. Please do not read any further if this will upset you. ***) The basics are that we must use the same pre-nap routine everytime, put him in his crib awake, and then check on him at pre-set intervals (5, 10 and then 15 minutes). We're not allowed to touch him during the check-ins and can only stay in the room for a maximum of 30 seconds. He must remain in his crib for naps for 1 hour, whether he sleeps or not. If he does happen to fall asleep...great! If not, we simply get him up after an hour and keep him awake until his next scheduled nap time.
Let me tell you, today did not go well! For his first nap, he screamed the entire hour and just as I was going into the room to pick him up, he fell asleep. Awesome, I thought! It actually worked! He is sleeping in his crib! He woke up exactly 3 minutes later and I realized that this was going to be even harder than I anticipated. For the second nap, he screamed for 45 minutes and then fell asleep. He actually slept for a full 22 minutes before waking up crying. By the time we were ready for nap #3 he was exhausted. He screamed uncontrollably for about 25 minutes before I finally caved in. Once I picked him up, he immediately went to sleep in my arms. I knew that I was caving, but I also knew that if he didn't get another little nap in today, that he would be too exhausted and not sleep well tonight (I know that it doesn't make sense, but that's how it works). He only slept for about 25 minutes, but he went to bed without a peep tonight. I am planning on trying again tomorrow but I hope that he gets the hang of it soon. Today was the longest day of my life and I am mentally and emotionally exhausted. I don't think that I can take too many more days of this! If any moms have any great nap advice, I am all ears.