IOS update erased all of my photos, even in iTunes?!

I am concerned that the latest iOS update erased all of my data on my phone, including every picture and video I ever took of my 2 year old daughter.
I regularly connect my Phone to my computer, so I had imagined that iTunes was backing up my data.  But as far as I can tell, this is not true.  It looks like it's all gone.  My phone has no photos.  iTunes has no photos.
Here's what happened:
When I agreed to upgrade the OS, the phone "verified" the update and then told me to connect to iTunes.  When I did, iTunes told me that the phone was in "restore" mode, and that I had to restore it to factory settings, which would delete all of my data. 
Turning off the phone didn't help, the only was forward was a restore.  I was concerned, but assumed that things were backed up on my computer.
Once my phone was "ready to use" everything was gone.
There are three backups of this phone in iTunes:  one from a few minutes ago, one from when the iOS update and restore finished, one from 9 months ago, and older ones.  There is not one from the backup I thought I was making a couple of days ago.  It's all gone.
Note: I have updated iOS many times before, but never before has it erased all of my stuff.  Something is different this time.
I do not use iCloud.
I regularly back up my computer to my Time Capsule.  Is there maybe some way that I can restore an old backup from that or something?
I'm very upset.
Please help.

My girlfriend just had a similar thing happen.  She orginally got her iPhone 5 2 months ago.  Sunday morning she clicked the recent update.  As it downloaded it prompted her to plug into itunes.  When she did it said that the install failed and she would need to restore the phone to continue.  Not really know what any of that meant, she restored the phone. After that she had no photos, no contacts, no apps and no calendar.
She is really only concerned about the photos (her sister just had a baby, she took the photos) we took it to the apple store and the guy said there was nothing that can be done.  Seriously, no photos could be recovered. were probably talking about 500 mbs of photos.
I checked for the restore files and one said 11/26 a few days before she bought the phone and then 2/3/12 with a time after the wipe happened. 
Icloud doesnt have any photos.  Is she really out of luck like the Apple store guy said, is there really nothing that  can be recovered.  I've erased a memory stick before on my camera and I was able to restore all photos, wondering if there is something like this that can be done.  Any ideas?

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