Why is only the backpage of my three page spread saving to my documents on my computer?

Hi Community,

I went back recently to open an old book cover InDesign Template and only found the last page of a three page spread. Went back and found that for several of my covers (which I spent dozens of hours on) only the last page had saved. Now, I can go to the PDFs that I converted these templates to and open them in InDesign, but, unfortunately, I created outlines for most of my text and when InDesign opens the PDF and converts it back to a document it preserves that feature and I can’t undo it. So I can’t edit the type. 

I don’t think I can get back my editable templates. I think those might be lost forever, but how do I know if I’m saving the entire three page spread or just one page of it? Do I need to make sure the cursor is on the background of the template and not on any one part of the spread? Do I need to make sure no one page is highlighted? Should I just always create a cover as a single page? 

Any help would be great.