- Yes. Definitely - once you're done with residency that is.
- If you're in private practice, you can always limit the number of patients you have in your practice but fewer patients means less money. With regard to work life balance though: births do not follow a M-F 9-5 schedule with federal holidays. Some people don't care that much who delivers, some definitely want it to be someone from the practice group, and some will put a premium on having an OB who is there every step of the way.
- The one thing you won't be doing is working in the newborn department. That's a pediatrician's territory. The joke/truth about how someone who likes births decides between OB and peds is where do you look after the baby comes out? If you're paying attention to the kid, you want to be a pediatrician. The OB is going to be sewing up mom (and that's regardless of method of delivery). Everything else is going to vary by practice setup.
- As a resident, often when you're on your GYN surg blocks. As a full fledged OB - outside of c-sections I imagine never. National average for USA is 1/3 births by c-section.
- Depending on the residency and what year you are in, you are on call as often as every 2nd night or as little as every 4th or 5th night. FWIW, the 80hr work week limit was just removed. National average for OB/Gyn residents is 58hours/week. (https://www.aamc.org/cim/specialty/exploreoptions/list/us/336850/obstetrics_and_gynecology.html) I believe that is the average across all 4 years of residency.
- After residency, you can easily get away with no procedures besides c-sections. Depending on where you end up living it may be a necessity that you can perform your own c-sections but I can imagine a scenario where you could let other people operate on your patients; however, I don't know how many patients would choose a doctor with such a policy.
- I don't know if minors can become doulas but that would certainly get you a lot of experience with birthing mothers assuming you're in a place that has some sort of system set up to provide people with doulas. For example my school has offered doula certification for students and then the hospital will facilitate matching women and doulas together. (https://www.dona.org/become-a-doula/find-doula-training/) Are there birthing classes or other things in your community geared towards moms to be? Might be easier to be a volunteer at a lamaze class than shadow an OB in a hospital and at least you're getting some exposure to pregnant women.
Wrote half of this on my phone so sorry if there are typos
Also I’m not interested in OB/Gyn (in fact that was probably my least favorite rotation) so not exactly an expert on the subject by any means.