Swapping needs for needs

A lesson we've learned at Goober Central is that sometimes you have to trade one positive thing to get another positive thing.  You learn to choose which is more important to you, and live with the sacrifice.  Unfortunately, there are times when neither option is a great one.  What I mean is:

-- Sleep at night vs Nap during the day.

This is not an always-swap, but it's often enough that we aren't thrilled about it.  For the longest time, he would take a two hour nap late in the evening, and wouldn't go to sleep until like 6 in the morning.  We let him have the nap during the day, because including the nap during the day, with as often as he woke up, Goob averaged 4 hours of sleep a day.  Recently, we've got him going to bed at 8PM (10PM at the latest) and getting up 8AM (10AM at the latest).  A *much* better schedule, with real, quality sleep in there.  He went from waking up sometimes every half hour, and no less frequent than every two hours, to waking up once at night, sometimes twice if he has a nightmare, and sleeping soundly through the rest of the night.  But we've lost day time nap.  Sometimes he will take an hour nap, sometimes half an hour in the car if we have somewhere to go.  But these are rare now.  He sleeps better at night without it.

-- Melatonin vs Possible nightmares

I've read that melatonin can cause very vivid dreams.  I get the distinct impression that Goob has been having nightmares regularly.  I'm not sure if it's caused by the melatonin, as I, myself, have horrible nightmares to the point of waking up screaming on a semi-regular basis.  But it seems to have increased since we upped his dosage from 1mg to 2mg a night.  But again, this is a swap where we really have to think about if it's worth it or not.  The sleeping progress I've mentioned already is partly due to the melatonin, and if the melatonin is causing nightmares are we willing to lose the positive sleep?  My answer is no.  Mainly because sleep is needed and we weren't getting it beforehand.  And we can't say specifically that the nightmares are from the melatonin, just as we can't say the sleep issues are from the autism.  Heck, his parents can't sleep without aides either.

So, for him to have good sleep at night, we've swapped daytime naps and accept nightmares (we think).  Is it a fair trade?  No, not really.  But we're not entirely sure of what else to do here.  We still encourage him to nap daily, we just don't fight him tooth and nail.  He's getting 12 hours without the nap.  I'm happy with this.

Swaps I don't like and am limiting and eliminating:

-- MILK:  Calming effects vs bad gas and stomach pain (I SWEAR he's lactose intolerant.  Why do I say that?  I'm his mother, that's why.)  He hates soy/almond/rice milk with a passion and throws a major fit when we offer it.  Sigh, this is a tough one.

-- Awesome at ABCs and 123s vs Communicative and functional language.Multiple receptive expressive language disorder SUCKS.

Why does it feel like we have to swap something good to get something good back?  Can't we have both good things, or not have the bad things at all?  I'm totally ready for something positive.