On trusting my gut and my baby

So here I am again typing a post on my iPhone with one hand while my beautiful baby sleeps on me.  We've graduated from the sling to an ergo cocoon (which is what he is swaddled in at night), and I'm upstairs in his room rocking him in the glider.  Over the past week we actually had some success with JC napping in his crib, but it's just so much work to get him to sleep there that I've gone back to letting him sleep on me.  I figure, we're in his room, close to the crib, and he's falling asleep pretty quickly so 
maybe these will all become sleep cues that will help with naps later.  Oh and I've made a resolution to stop reading baby to-do books (e.g., the no-cry nap solution), because they only end up stressing me out!  My baby needs to nap but he onlydoes so for 45 min at a time.  These books, however, would have me believe that any nap under a 90 min is useless.  What?  Since I can't force my baby to sleep, short of drugging him, I've decided to just stop paying attention to generic advice about the average baby and instead raise my baby according to my gut and what I know about my unique son.  He's a happy-go-lucky kid in between naps so things must be going okay!  Has anyone else experienced this (or a sleeping pattern that deviates from the norm)?  How's has it worked out for you?  It's funny because he was sleeping great at night last week, then I got it in my head to read some books on sleep and his sleep actually got worse as I started tracking it.  I finally gave up the monitoring two days ago and he's slept great since?  Go figure!