How to get a baby to nap in cot?!

[wingingitalltheway]

Hoping for any ideas...
My almost 6 month old DD will only have daytime naps on me. Some days this doesn’t matter and I love the cuddles but I just can’t get anything else done!
I’ve tried putting her down awake but sleepy, completely asleep, put white noise on, not put white noise on. She will usually go to sleep but will wake after a maximum of 30 mins and is then still very tired when she wakes

My baby never naps in his cot, he associates it with bedtime and will happily sleep in their of a night but no chance will he nap

It's happened once, by complete chance.

He actually naps on the floor - I know how bad that sounds, on play mat with a blanket. It's his favourite place to nap, the mat is cushioned, like a changing mat.

Same issue here- baby is 6 months at the end of the week. A month ago he wouldn’t nap in the cot full stop but now naps in the cot for one sleep cycle- anywhere between 30 and 45 minutes- occasionally two sleep cycles. This occasional 2 has coincided with dropping his third nap. He goes to bed at 6.30 pm sleeps through until 4.30 for a feed then back down until 7.30/8ish so although 2 naps seems not many he is getting a lot more night sleep.
I did a lot of reading about sleep a month ago (during his naps on me) and ended up instigating some ideas from books but haven’t done any particular sleep training. I’ve used lockdown to work his naps and introduced a more structured schedule to the day, nap time routine and comforter. I followed his cues for a week to find what his natural routine was and have worked on that. Fingers crossed it is kind of working and he has also stopped using his dummy. I offer it but he never sucks on it for more than a couple of minutes so I think that has helped as well. If he wakes after one sleep cycle I lay on the bed with him next to me and see if he will go off to sleep again. Sometimes he does, others he doesn’t. From the reading I have done it is still quite normal for short naps at this age- if your baby does nap in the cot the consensus seems to be to continue them in the cot but get them to nap more often. I’ve read books about crying it out, softer approaches etc. I don’t think there is an easy way but the way I have done it seems to work for us. They key did seem to be that if he wakes in the cot happy then leave him for a bit playing so that he gets the idea that it is sleep time, make the room as dark as possible and playing in his cot with him during awake time so he associates good things with the cot.

My DS would only ever nap for 30 minutes no matter where he was and really disliked his pram/pushchair in particular. Always been a good night sleeper thank god.
I could set my watch by his 30 minute naps but I just kept putting him down in his cot (just gave him more naps) and when he got to about 8 months he just suddenly started sleeping longer in a morning and then a few weeks later on the afternoon. now he’s 1 he has two solid naps in there.
The flip side of this is he isn’t great on the go as he struggles to sleep anywhere else, and when I do get him to sleep it’s back to 30 minutes. But he’s 1 now so copes much better with a short nap.