The sentence out of context is confusing. My guess is that there is a government program that has a start or end date that gives people some sort of financial gain if they have a birth after a certain date. In that case I would simplify the meaning like this: 1.(Despite reassurance from the government that would-be parents would not put financial gain over their newborn's welfare) The government has some program that rewards parents depending on the date of birth of their children but they didn't think that would make parents try to schedule births because parent's should only care about what is best for their babies. 2.(over 1,000 births were switched from late June to early July through a combination of additional bed rest and pushing scheduled cesarean sections back a few days) They are implying that the government was wrong because many births were re-scheduled and the writer seems to believe it was for whatever incentive the article is talking about.