Phone crashed: Can I recover my texts?

My iPhone 5 was acting weird today, and not sending texts, so I decided to restart it. I powered it down, but then it wouldn't turn back on. I ended up holding the power button down for a good 20 seconds and it finally started. Then it took a LONG time to start up. Once if finally did, everything seemed fine, except that ALL my texts were gone. All my iCloud data was there (contacts, email, etc). All my apps and settings are ok. All my pix are there. My phone history and voicemail are there. It seems to be JUST texts that are missing. I hoped they'd come back after a little while (like when you turn icloud off/on)- they didn't. I restarted again, hoping that the funny reboot was the problem. No dice.

I back up automatically to icloud. My last backup is from 9am today. My last full itunes backup is from March.

In itunes the only restore option I have is the backup from March.

From what I can tell, the only way to restore from the icloud backup is settings>general>reset>erase all content and settings.

Before I do that, I want to make sure it will fix my problem. If the texts aren't backed up and are just gone, I won't bother with the restore.

Next question- if I don't restore now, and I let my phone backup tonight, will the new backup (of my current state, with no texts) replace the previous backup? I.e. do I need to NOT let it overwrite the backup that *might* contain my texts?

I hope you can help. I have some text conversations in there that go back years, including every text my husband has ever sent... I hope they're not all gone for good.

Thank you!!