My Swing My Savior

So I have been wanting to get the baby to go to sleep without nursing for months now, however it hasn't happened.  Its not that I am in a hurry to stop nursing, I just want to not rely on it for sleep time.  I have tried nursing him until he is almost sleeping and then transferring him to his crib while awake, as suggested by many gentle sleep training sites, but he would just scream and not stop.  After a few minutes I can't handle it anymore.  I keep telling myself that the worst case scenario will be that when he is a little older I will explain to him at a level he can understand that we don't nurse to sleep and have him participate in what he would like for a bedtime routine.  That being said, I know he can fall asleep without nursing.  He sleeps in the car, he sleeps in his swing (luckily he still fits in that thing and hopefully he will for a couple more months), and very rarely he will fall asleep next to me.  

Last night I nursed him, as per the usual with our bedtime routine.  He fell asleep and then woke about 45 minutes later.  He wasn't interested in sleeping.  He wanted to play.  So I tried something different.  I let him play a little and then put him in his swing with the hopes that I would be able to transfer him to his crib once he was sleeping.  It worked!  I think I may try to do this for several nights so that he can loosen the association between nursing and sleep.  Then, if he will let me, I would like to try rocking him to sleep - one because I want to have some variety, and two because he is going to grow out of that swing.  I still nursed him when he woke up in the middle of the night, but hey, baby steps.  I wonder if I put him in his swing rather than nursing him in the middle of the night this would result in him waking less?  I would think that it is less appealing than nursing, right?  It would be exhausting for me for a while, but if it meant that I got more sleep in the long run I would do it in a heartbeat.