What are symptoms of teething pain at night?

[zebaby]

DS just got his first tooth about three weeks ago but is still having sleeping through the night. Before the teething he slept about 10-11 hours straight at night. Now he's waking 2+ (sometimes as many as 6) times per night. I can't tell if he's just squirmy because of teething pain or if he wants attention, food or if he's reacting to something I ate/drank. A couple of times he did wake chewing on his hand but mostly he wakes crying and wants to be picked up only to squirm in our arms. I end up nursing him to calm but I just wish I knew what was going on. I bought some Humphrey's teething pellets which I sometimes give him before nursing to bed. I haven't given him multiple doses of it unless it gets bad. How can I tell what's wrong? What are the symptoms of teething pain at night?

Bonus question: What can I do to help?

[tanyalynn]

For my son, it wasn't obvious that it was teething, it was more a matter of eliminating other stuff. He wasn't sick, he wasn't really hungry though he did want to nurse back to sleep, and nothing else really seemed wrong. For him, it would come and go in waves, where he would start waking more frequently (as much as every 1-1.5hrs, which was rough) and then that would eventually stop and he'd go back to his normal routine. I think it just made him low-level uncomfortable so when he got to a lighter part of sleep, he'd wake up instead of drifting nicely back into deeper sleep.

I never found anything to really help (well, I take that back--our chiropractor actually helped once, but I don't think that's normal--it was really strange, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself). When it was really bad, I'd give him some Advil. Not the best solution, but at times I really needed a bit of uninterrupted sleep.