Can I import a resource into a root stack containing nested stacks?

I use sam to manage our API resources. We created a bucket and cloudfront distribution for our front end application outside of the sam-managed cloudformation stuff. I would like to import these resources into the stack. I've followed the directions to import, however the change-set fails to create because it thinks there are changes in all nested stacks (referenced as AWS::Serverless::Application). I thought of trying to create a separate stack and then import it as a nested stack, but I think the import changeset will have the same problem. The only hint I have so far is that I might be able to set all the nested stacks to Retain and then remove them from the root template then reimport them all once the resources are imported, but this seems ... daunting.

Is there a better way?