New line being stripped from sed command

Hi,

I am trying to insert text to the beginning of a text file with 'sed'. Its working however the new line is getting stripped.

I have a variable with the text that I want to insert:

VAR="This is the header line \n March 22, 2010 \n"
sed "1i\\
$VAR" logfile >tmpfile

The text gets inserted at the beginning of the file with no new line, just the 'n' with out the \.

# cat tmpfile
This is the header line n March 22, 2010 n

Is there a way to have the new line work here?

I am running on 5.0.7.

Thanks

VAR="This is the header line 
March 22, 2010 
"

This gives an error:

sed: Command garbled: March 22, 2010

What's wrong with

echo $VAR >tmpfile
cat logfile >>tmpfile