Madonna has revealed she did know that it would be difficult to adopt a child from Malawi but pressed ahead regardless.

Malawi is not part of the Hague Convention for intercountry adoption so there are few existing laws and procedures for the process.

Madonna said recently that the social worker warned her and husband Guy Ritchie about the problems with adopting from the country: “She didn’t say don’t do it, but she just said expect challenges, and, boy, did we get them.”

“We were basically creating the laws as we went. There’s over a million orphans in Malawi, and in my opinion the laws need to change because these children need to be rescued.”