How do I restore data from before ios6 update, when no backups are listed, but I know the icloud backs everything up every night?

I have an iphone4, and even though it backs up every night to the icloud (which I signed up for expressly to avoid this kind of problem) there are only 2 backups listed to replace what was erased during the update (on the computer). There are no calendar entries at all in icloud, and I don't recall a prompt pre-update to back up my iphone. The most recent backup I have is from November, so all my texts have a gap between Nov and Feb. OK, I may have overestimated the capabilities of icloud, and I have already been lectured by a co-worker about doing a backup (different from an icloud backup) before updating the OS. Can I recover anything in the gap between november and the update? I'm trying out some "find hidden files on your iphone software" (decipher) that isn't really helping. I opened one file and it was all in weird apple coder language.