How to retrieve things deleted from my iphone 4?

Alright, my mom gave me her iphone 4 and it hasn't been updated since the day she got it when it first came out. Because of some complications i had use it & deal with it not being updated in this past year and i kept some really important pictures and had some important text messages.
Finally, i was able to update the phone tonight. What happened step by step:
I connected my un updated phone to itunes and pretty sure it synced,
then i had to update itunes and once that was finished i'm pretty sure i synced my phone again.
Next, i went and updated my phone. It took about 2 hours and things popped up like "(phone name) backing up" or "itunes backing up" something like that and i assumed that it meant it was keeping all my stuff. Once the update was all finished, both itunes and my phone said "welcome to your new phone" and everything is g o n e.
no pictures, texts, songs, notes.zilch.nada.zero.
please help me, a lot of the things that were on that phone when it wasn't updated mean a lot to me.
i do kinda know it's impossible to bring it back but there's a lil tiny hope that maybe it might work out.

If you have synced your iphone on any PC and made a back up of your iphone, then just connect your phone to that PC and restore the iphone.

Pretty sure you just need to restore the phone from a back up. It should all come back. For future reference, in your settings go to icloud and make sure your apple Id is showing, below your name is a list of things like music, images contacts etc. And they have a little toggle switch next to them. Make sure they are all on and then scroll down and hit the back up button and it will give you the option to automatically back up everyday. That way no matter what your stuff will be there. If you get a new phone you can just log into your icloud account on it and turn all that stuff back on and it will push all the content onto the new phone.

Nowadays, retrieving deleted data from an iPhone 4 is not a big issue. You can bring back all your damaged or deleted data by using enigma recovery products very easily and effectively.

I agree with the point Darren just initiated. But if it's not the way you can get them back somehow, then it has no other option to it.