Three Year Old's Night Time Sleeping Gone Haywire - Please Help!

[AndreaNZ]

Our DS of 3 has never been the most fantastic of sleepers (but by no means the worst)- generally waking up once (or sometimes twice) in the night most nights for milk/water/teddy/a wee - but has always settled down to sleep straight afterwards so it's felt pretty manageable. The last couple of weeks though he has taken to waking around 1am and insisting on coming in our bed (or that I sleep in his bed with him.) Regrettably I did allow this on a couple of occasions and now he is repeatedly waking and coming in to our room during the night. Last night he was awake from 1am - 2.45am - calling out, coming in to us and then us gently/firmly taking him back to his own bed. He must have been in and out of our room a dozen times! After a couple of weeks of this we're feeling frazzled and overwhelmed. I have to resist the temptation to just give in and let him in with us - then wonder to myself why I think it's such a problem if he DOES share our bed...Am I being too anal about all this?? I'd really appreciate some advice!