Would you call this child abuse?

So I am dealing with a new parenting issue for me. I live with a sweet, smiling, adoring, drooling, utterly dependent, pre-inappropriately obsessive infant mangler wolf-child. Shredder. Hmmm...that last part? I don't like it. No. Not so much.
My feral monster is so deceptively packaged, I don't even want to send him back out into the wild. Rather, tame him to live here with us civilized hugging folk, with the ones who bear (and bare!) breasts laden full of milk and allow merciless beard-tuggings. In a family bed, dude. Do you realize how lucky you are here? Do you want to mess with this? Seriously.
He is so friggin cute he is still with us, miraculously not having been swatted into submission by his fed up and bloodied boobalicious mama.

I think we have a child abuse issue on our hands here.

My child is abusing me.

He suddenly seems to need all this extra stimuli to get to sleep (in addition to his devoted draining of the mammaries). So, while trying to stage what should be a relaxing and bonding bedtime, his little razor-sharp nails have found that scooping up tiny little reggiano-type threads out of my chest and abdominal area are the most soothing way for him to fall into slumber.
What I am trying oh-so-delicately to say here is:
THE LITTLE MANGLER WILL NOT STOP PINCHING AND SCRATCHING ME!
Seriously, I am almost driven to buy something like this because I cannot stand to be maimed so generously and he is not willing to put himself to sleep by other methods so peacefully.

I do not know what is up with the little man. He has always been an easily agitated nurser; too easily distracted and very demanding with the right mood for a good bedtime meal (for instance, a restaurant where nobody else at all minds but the kid tearing at the blanket being lovingly tucked around his chin and his mama's breast will NOT do), but this latest is bordering on insanity. For me.
For a while it was grabbing the skin around my breast closest to his mouth - which would also be as close to my nips as his hungry snortling would allow him. I soon put a stop to that with my screams and refusal to give him any more milk right now.
Then he moved down, pretending to clumsily unhook a bra that isn't even there. He pinched. I flinched. He grabbed. I grabbed. He woke up from his half-sleep and screamed until I sacrificed another breast for the sake of some sleep for him and a feww goddamned minutes of blogging (or Deadwood) for me. He latched on and within seconds resumed his rhythmic attempts to maim me, which have now gone from pinching to scratching. The scratching for some reason seems to have become part of his ritual for falling asleep. I do not like this ritual and I resist this. My breasts have gotten the message as well.
This has gone on and on to mean that, while nursing, I have one hand to grab at least one of his two determined hellbent for blood razor-wielding hands and restrain it in my own. He does not like this at all - it appears to break up his rhythm that takes him into slumberland. This is immensely frustrating for me, as it is a vicious circle. Every time I interrupt him, it means more minutes until sleep actually comes, since he and I are fighting each other with a little thumbkin battle under the covers.


My very wise British neighbor who recently vbac'd her fourth kid into our neighborhood commented thusly, "Ohfuck that sounds just like Nico (her 2nd). He went from Buddha to this growling sort of testosterone possessed animal. What you've got on your hands is a scorpio male."
(jesus she is right)

What to do with the little mangler?!