Hi Carla,
We use a program for our newsletter and I always clone the previous one. I've taken to using very generic names for the program assets (e.g. "Newsletter" for the email) so that I can easily swap out things.
What you might try is to simply replace the content of the email, rather than unapproving and starting a new email from scratch. This is what I do and it works like a charm.
- Jocelyn