Lost photos when I got a new phone

Hello friends. I’m hoping I can make this make sense and VERY MICH hoping to recover lost photos as it had two years’ worth of my children’s memories.

I started with an iPhone X. I recently got an iPhone 14.

I never could get the X to do a backup, it would error out and I thought “no big deal. I’ll just use the new phone and get my photos from the other phone using a USB on the computer over the weekend.”

I set my new phone up, have been using it for days. Over the weekend, I turned my old phone on and as I prepared to hook it up to the computer I realized.. all the photos were gone. And the OLD phone was showing the same photos as the new one.

use the same Apple ID, but I was under the impression that even still, they would just merge-not delete my old photos for the new ones on the old phone.

Nothing else on the old phone seems to have changed. All apps the same, nothing else seems out of place or missing-just the photos. And honestly the photos are the most important thing to me.

is there any way to recover them? I have already attempted to disconnect my Apple ID from the old phone (hoping that would revert the change and it would delete the new photos and put the old ones back) but it has not. Please help, I’m desperate.