SKOWHEGAN – As she prepares to leave her 3-month-old son and deploy to Iraq with the Army National Guard, Amanda Bolduc savors each remaining moment with the child.

Bolduc, 29, was memorizing Brayden’s every feature while she held him in her arms, knowing she won’t see him for a long time.

A 2nd lieutenant with the 133rd Engineering Battalion, Bolduc will fly to Fort Drum, N.Y., at the end of January to join her unit.

If she’s lucky, she will see Brayden once during the next 18 months when she takes her allotted two-week leave. “I hope to be able to take it when he has his first birthday,” Bolduc said.

Under Army policy, a mother who is a soldier can stay home with a baby until the child is 4 months old, according to Bolduc and her husband, Robert. After that, they said, a mother can find herself sent to the front lines to be part of the war effort.

Amanda Bolduc reacted to her situation with stoicism.

“You are never not in the military. When you sign on that dotted line, that’s the chance you take,” she said.

But her husband, who works as an accountant, was critical of Army policy that separates a mother from her infant child.

“It is unconscionable that, in one of the most civilized countries in the world, we do this to our children,” he said, suggesting that mothers should not be forced to choose between their military careers and their children.

Amanda Bolduc, a graduate of Madison Area Memorial High School, signed up for the National Guard when she was 17 to help pay for college expenses.

“It used to be the National Guard’s role was more stateside, but times have changed,” Bolduc said, “especially since 9-11. I’ve been in uniform ever since.”

The 12-year veteran said she was called to duty for airport security shortly after terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center in New York City; she has been working for the Counter Drug Unit at Camp Keyes in Augusta since then.

Bolduc, who holds a degree in industrial organizational psychology at the University of Maine at Farmington, is platoon leader for a 24-person “vertical” platoon, whose mission is to construct more buildings and bridges in Iraq.

The Bolducs said they were surprised at the deployment order, which came down in mid-November when Brayden was about 6 weeks old.

With the disappointing news, a long list of hopes and dreams for their first and only child has been dashed. Their plans to breast-feed Brayden had to be abandoned; they are now trying to adjust him to formula. Their hope to share the joy of raising their boy together will now be impossible.

Robert Bolduc, who works long hours during the tax preparation season, will be getting help from his own and his wife’s parents in caring for Brayden.

“That’s just not the way it should be; and certainly not the way we intended it to be. It’s extremely difficult, gut wrenching,” he said.

Bolduc said his wife “is the best soldier I know and has dedicated the last 12 years of her life” to the military, but he may try to convince her not to re-enlist when the time comes.