SKOWHEGAN (AP) – 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 full well that 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.

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, who signed up for the National Guard at age 17 to help pay college expenses, reacted with stoicism to her situation.

“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 mothers should not be forced to choose between their military careers and their children.

Amanda Bolduc, who holds a degree in industrial organizational psychology at the University of Maine at Farmington, is a platoon leader whose mission is to construct buildings and bridges in Iraq.

“It’s extremely difficult, gut wrenching,” Robert Bolduc said.

He added that his wife “is the best solider 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.