Help! Stuck on 30 minute naps with an under-slept nine month old

I have a nine month old son and we’ve been co-sleeping at night since day one and have gone through transitions from carrier to swing to now mattress on the floor naps. I lay beside him and he shuffles himself to sleep, it takes anywhere from 5-15 minutes. I’m super happy with our set up except that he has these 30 minute micro naps. From what I know about baby sleep is that that is his sleep cycle. Because I’m the sleep association for him, it was suggested to me that I lay beside him for the entire duration of the nap until he connects the sleep cycle and learns to sleep longer. I tried that but when he’s awake, he’s awake, there’s no chance of him falling back to sleep. He’s been an alert and stimulated baby since he was born. He sleeps 11-12 hours/night with two quick milk feeds. And currently our nap schedule is 3/3/3/2 (stuck on 3 naps/day because of short naps). There was two weeks where he was sleeping in so we were down to two naps but not because of longer naps, just the day was shorter.

I’m just at the threshold of what I can handle - he’s not getting adequate rest so he’s grumpy when he’s awake and I barely have time to eat because his naps are so short. We’re also completely stuck at three naps/day because of the super short naps. At this point I am prepared to sleep train in a crib (it would be a first) but feel so nervous because I’ve heard 9 months is extremely difficult because of separation anxiety. Has anyone successfully connected short nap cycles with a baby newly introduced to a crib?